TW: That secrecy is needed at times is taken for granted. But defining the parameters of secrecy has profound implications which generally receive scant attention. The executive branch of our federal government has been gradually but inexorably expanding those parameters since WWII. It has been a bi-partisan effort for sure but the greatest purveyors of expanding secrecy are the two POTUS one would most likely guess (Nixon and W. Bush naturally).
Secrecy can be power as it creates asymmetries of information between those with the knowledge and those without. Arthur Schlesinger identified this trend 35 years ago in his book "The Imperial Presidency". The problem has only worsened since then.
Obama has taken tentative steps to arrest the trend whether his initiatives will stand the test of time or merely be one of those innocent opening gambits remains to be scene.
From Jon Alter at Newsweek:
"For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city." Those were the most important words President Obama spoke on his first full day in office. Obama then signed executive orders to shift the balance back toward openness in government. At least in theory, the burden of proof will move from those who would release information to those who would classify it.
...Thomas Jefferson argued that "information is the currency of democracy," and for generations peacetime America respected the principle. Believing, as Secretary of State Henry Stimson did, that "gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail," the nation chose not to even have an intelligence service until World War II. Then came the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and the National Security Act of 1947, which essentially said that a certain constantly expanding category of information was "born classified." That means no formal process for assessing if something should be secret or not—just an officious bureaucrat with a big stamp.
The Cold War created a national-security state that we now assume to be normal. Occasionally, the value of openness asserts itself, only to be crushed by fear. President Johnson's 1966 Freedom of Information Act and declassification efforts by Presidents Carter and Clinton were severely curtailed by Bush after 9/11. And to protect former presidents (including, not coincidentally, his father and himself), Bush gave the ex men the power to keep their records secret after leaving office. This attack on the very idea of honest history was also reversed by Obama's executive order.
...Every agency of government is afflicted with the secrecy disease.
...Rational people agree that vital national-security details (i.e., sources and methods of intelligence-gathering) need to be kept secret. But the 9/11 Commission reported that 75 percent of what was classified about Osama bin Laden should not have been, and by some estimates as much as 90 percent of secret material wouldn't hurt national security if posted online tomorrow.
...The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that secrecy isn't just antidemocratic, it's stupid. It impedes wise decision making because what's not known can't be widely debated. That by definition reduces options. Moynihan wrote that secrecy, rather than Jefferson's information, has become the currency of government, as agencies hoard everything they can. This creates scarcity, which makes secrets "organizational assets" to be traded in a closed market of officials, with the same harmful consequences of any closed market
...Dealing with classified material makes officials feel important...And they worry that were they to err on the side of openness and declassification, they'll get in trouble with their bosses...."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/181278
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