The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World

by John S. Friedman

Book Overview

Official histories have determined our view of the past. Governments and those in power have tried to preserve and reveal only information that serves their interests. Until now.

The Secret Histories is a groundbreaking collection of the documents that have clarified history and altered the way we view politics and culture. From Edwin Black's investigation into the strategic alliance between IBM and the Nazi regime to I. F. Stone's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312425171
• ISBN13: 9780312425173
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

More Than Ever, Yesterday Is Today

If ever a book came along on a timely basis, this one does--an assessment that may seem a bit odd, considering that most of the material in "The Secret Histories" is several years, or even decades, old. What anthologist John S. Friedman is doing here, however, could not be more pertinent to the world now swirling around us. His subtitle is "Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World"--with emphasis on the word "hidden." Friedman, a noted filmmaker, essayist and journalist, brings the premise that "official secrecy" has lamentably been close to the core of the U.S. government--and others--for the past half-century, in matters that desperately affected the life and well-being of the people. Doubtless such has been the case stretching back through the eons, but Friedman wisely limits his startling array to contemporary cases, close enough to still reverberate. Although shocking secrets from other countries--England, the Soviet Union, Rwanda--are included in this 26-episode collection, Friedman is also wise to concentrate on the United States, for that is where most of his readers will be. He has no shortage of atrocities based at home: IBM's complicity in the Holocaust, horrific governmental medical experiments on citizens, rampant FBI violations of privacy and other rights, the cover-up of the link between smoking and cancer, the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, Watergate, systematic purging of minorities from Florida's voting rolls, the Pentagon Papers' wholesale lies. Most chilling, however, are the book's revelations that strike raw nerves in today's news. When zealous anti-Communist U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy was on his rampage in the 1950s, it was similar to recent administration charges that all those opposed to its policies are traitors. The prisoner-of-war atrocities at Abu Ghraib in Iraq are spelled out. And also with regard to Iraq, this book presents evidence that the U.S. wars in both Korea and Vietnam were launched based on false and manipulated reports--as Iraq may have been. Friedman does not come right out and say so (and maybe he should have), but a sub-theme of the book is that our society desperately depends on bold journalism to crack the dark secrets of government--especially now, when bold journalism is Missing In Action. It is hard to say which axiom most applies: Santayana's "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes," or Jefferson's "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." "The Secret Histories" are certainly vigilant, and we need to be aware of them. Richard McCord/2005

John Friedman's The Secret Histories

Just when the mainstream media is rushing to bury the Scooter Libby indictments in bird flu stories and sycophantic coverage of yet another supreme court nomination, a chilling and immensely informative new book entitled The Secret Histories appears to illumine the darkest side of American politics. If it seems preposterous that top ranked administration officials would engage in the outing of a covert CIA operative, risking her life and that of contacts, just for political revenge, The Secret Histories, edited by John S. Friedman, makes it clear that abusing power and deluding the public have become a sociopathic impulse in most recent administrations. Friedman has masterfully compiled a selection of insidious secrets from covert interventions in Iran and Chile, secret FBI investigations of Martin Luther King, top-secret plutonium experiments on human guinea pigs, to FBI covert programs against American citizens called "Cointelpro," the relationship of IBM to the Holocaust, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Watergate, and Americans torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, to name a few. Friedman, who has deep roots in New Mexico, spending significant portions of the last 50 years in the Pecos valley, is a journalist and an Academy Award-winning producer of the documentary, Hotel Terminus, chronicling the life and times of the Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie, and the co-director of Stealing the Fire, the history of underground trafficking in stolen nuclear weapons secrets. He is a regular contributor to The Nation. James Collier in his Foreword writes, "Suppressing of information, in a free society, can be exclusively a matter of government connivance, but often - and some of the stories collected here make the point - the culture of secrecy requires a complicitous media and a passive citizenry. We do not know what we do not want to know." One of the grimmest chapters is about the l994 Pulitzer Prize winning reporting of Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome on medical experiments injecting deadly Plutonium into unsuspecting patients from l945 to l947. After Welsome's three part series ran in the Tribune, other investigators uncovered, Friedman writes, the terrible secret that "thousands of human radiation experiments had been conducted during the Cold War on people who were, for the most part, poor, sick, and helpless." Friedman quotes sociologist Max Weber when he writes, "The concept of the `official secret' is the specific invention of the bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy as this attitude." "To preserve its power, bureaucracy hides information about its activities," Friedman says. "The less lawmakers and citizens know about what the bureaucracy is doing the less chance there is for criticism and change." Recent glimpses into the outrageous lying of the non-elected bureaucratic upper echelons of the current administration make Friedman's eye-opening anthology a must read in this bleak time.

"History is a frog: half of it submerged..."

The Secret Histories is a compilation of dozens of documents, transcripts and investigative journalistic efforts, exposing the formerly undisclosed details in the public interest. At a time when the Freedom of Information Act is a critical factor in untangling the half-truths and bureaucratic excuses for incompetence, even fraudulent activities, the public must be willing to inform themselves. Formerly unbiased journalists opened the door to democratic discourse in the affairs of government and bureaucracy, but as we have so recently seen, corporate ownership of media can affect the exposure of certain information and access to open debate on critical issues. Democracy thrives on discourse; history has proven, over and over, that where there is secrecy, there is opportunity for fraud and misinformation. A journalist and documentary filmmaker, John S Friedman has gathered examples of memos, published articles and assorted documents that include the work of Edward R. Murrow, James Risen, Alexander Haig, Richard Nixon, HR Haldeman and other notable figures. Subtitled "Hidden Truths that Challenged the Past and Changed the World", this weighty volume covers the code breakers and collaborators of World War II, the Korean War, the Atomic Age, Cold War Secrets (including Murrow's "Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy") and Mark's "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate". The section on Original Crime includes material on Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War's "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" and "The Massacre at My Lai". Moving into more recent history, Iran is discussed, as well as Kornbluh's "The Pinochet File; and under the heading "Abuses of Power", the Nixon White House, Watergate and the torture at Abu Ghraib Prison. Some revelations in The Secret Histories: the Mafia was one of the many secret societies created to free the island of foreign domination; war is only politics carried on by other means, i.e., the Korean War; "the running battle between Hoover and [Bobby] Kennedy defined the larger political context for the escalation of activity against [Martin Luther] King"; Strom Thurmond sent a memo to the White House and Attorney General John Mitchell, suggesting that John Lennon's planned tour would coincide with the 1972 election campaign and Lennon should be deported to avoid money pouring into the "coffers of the New Left; the original investigation of the My Lai Massacre was conducted by Colin Powell, a US Army Major, "who refuted claims that a massacre had occurred", despite testimony to the contrary. In order to take ownership of our society and the government that represents us, it falls upon the citizens to inform ourselves, to ask the hard questions and not shirk from uncomfortable answers. The documents in this significant collection are timely and important, disclosing formerly hidden information concerning our nation's history. Here is both the opportunity and the means to question the elected government and the corporations that do bu