Secrecy: The American Experience

by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Book Overview

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, chairman of the bipartisan Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, here presents an eloquent and fascinating account of the development of secrecy as a mode of regulation in American government since World War I--how it was born, how world events shaped it, how it has adversely affected momentous political decisions and events, and how it has eluded efforts to curtail or end it. Senator Moynihan begins...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300080794
• ISBN13: 9780300080797
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Eroding the open society

This is an important documentation and history of the blight of screcy overtaking the American Government in the wake of the Second World War, especially in the context of the Cold War. Moynihan is especially critical of the way in which the gestation of classified information supporting fallacious conclusions (e.g. the Missile Gap)thwared proper open discussion and review of wrong policies. Moynihan makes a sound case for the excessive use of classification, to the point of absurdity. This erosion of the open society requires an active correction, although it is hard to see how this usurpation of power can be stopped in the short term. In any case, the threat to 'government by the people' is direct and ominous.

Extraordinary Contribution to National Sanity and Security

Senator Moynihan applies his intellect and his strong academic and historical bent to examine the U.S. experience with secrecy, beginning with its early distrust of ethnic minorities. He applies his social science frames of reference to discuss secrecy as a form of regulation and secrecy as a form of ritual, both ultimately resulting in a deepening of the inherent tendency of bureaucracy to create and keep secrets-secrecy as the cultural norm. His historical overview, current right up to 1998, is replete with documented examples of how secrecy may have facilitated selected national security decisions in the short-run, but in the long run these decisions were not only found to have been wrong for lack of accurate open information that was dismissed for being open, but also harmful to the democratic fabric, in that they tended to lead to conspiracy theories and other forms of public distancing from the federal government. He concludes: "The central fact is that we live today in an Information Age. Open sources give us the vast majority of what we need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Decisions made by people at ease with disagreement and ambiguity and tentativeness. Decisions made by those who understand how to exploit the wealth and diversity of publicly available information, who no longer simply assume that clandestine collection-that is, 'stealing secrets'-equals greater intelligence. Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security....Secrecy is for losers."

An open democratic republic and secrecy.

Senator Moynihan quickly covers US government secrecy from early US history, through to the 1797 Alien and Sedition Act and 1917 Espionage Act, to the National Security Act of 1947, to the Freedom of Information Act, and to the current US policies on national security. Within this time frame, he covers WWI, between the wars, WWII, the Cold War, the battles against totalitarianism and communism, and his thoughts on our future course for national security in an open society. Within this, he discusses J. Edgar Hoover (FBI), the CIA, and the NSA;Truman, McCarthyism, atom and hydrogen bombs, Bay of Pigs, Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Carter and Reagan,Iran and Contras, Nicaragua,Viet Nam, and the failure of Russia and communism. He explains how excessive secrecy can be not only expensive and curtail freedoms, but all too often has proved to be ineffective or to lead to bad decisions, policies, and results. Moynihan points out how US intelligence failed to recognize the importance of Russia's Lennist-Marxist enormous social and economic problems, concentrating on the military, and how those problems greatly contributed to bringing down a military-atomic giant.Moynihan recognizes the need for secrecy in defense, military, and police actions in an often unfriendly world, but says it is all too often and unnecessarily over done and slow to declassify, causing over-blown, hyper-secret departmental and agency bastians of power, bureaucracy, unnecessary spending, poor defense and security decisions, and lack of reported responsiblity. Finally, he explores that for the US to remain a powerful and democratic republic, we must practice and keep an open society where at all possilbe and curtail unnecessary secrecy that spawns these closed and burgeoning bureaucratic organizations, agencies, government departments and associated spending. The introduction by Richard Gid tells much about Senator Moynihan, and early in the book the reader is brought up to eye level with this very capable academic-politician, social scientist, and senior American statesman. An excellent book. A. Pardoe

Why classification is a denial of access to reality

Senator Moynihan, with many years of experience in the arcane world of congressional oversight of our intelligence agencies, shows how and why the American government classifies (i.e. withholds from public knowledge) an astonishing variety of information--when often the information that really matters is more likely to be found in your daily paper than in government archives. The most astounding revelation (of many) is why Omar Bradley, on behalf of the US Army, did not allow President Truman to know what the Venona intercepts of Russian intelligence communications revealed about the real degree of Soviet penetration of our government. Thus it was left to a bizarre cast of characters like the drunken Sen. McCarthy and the disenchanted Chambers and Bentley to give an ill-informed and partial picture of such penetration. Bradley's dutiful but obtuse territorial withholding of Army intelligence from his Commander-in-Chief deprived Truman of vital information that could have made a profound difference in waging the Cold War and averted collateral damage to domestic civility and polity. This sort of "classification" and "need-to-know" would poison American politics and skew American intelligence for fifty years. And if you don't think that the bureaucratic reflex to restrict, without good reason, the free flow of information isn't still harming this country, you had better read this cogent and powerful book.

Not to be missed by anyone interested in democracy

A concise history of American govermental secrecy and its consequences. Essential reading for anyone interested in American history and the future of democracy in America or elsewhere. A bit scholarly for a casual read but eye opening. Great book about the consequences of excessive secrecy on a democracy.