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Secrecy in the Post-Cold War Era
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10500 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1993 |
2,202 Words |
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Steven Aftergood
Steven After good is an engineer and director of the Project
on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists
in Washington, D.C. |
Last fall Congress passed a law that would finally require the release of most of the secret government files concerning the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Legislation was needed, Congress stated, because the government secrecy system "has prevented the timely public disclosure of records," related to the assassination. Such documents have been withheld even though most of them are almost 30 years old and "only in the rarest cases" is there a justifiable need to conceal them any longer.
What Congress failed to acknowledge is that the problem of excessive secrecy is not limited to a few highly controversial historical episodes like the JFK assassination. Rather, it extends throughout much of the government, and it is a growing factor in the public's skepticism toward government officials and policies.
Indeed, by limiting its attention to the subject of a highly charged public dispute, instigated in large part by Oliver Stone's film JFK, Congress runs the risk of turning the question of government secrecy into a partisan issue. It is not.
The problem of government secrecy cuts to the heart of who we are as a nation. The very concept of representative democracy presupposes an informed electorate with access to information about its government's activities. The constitutional separation of powers, with its implication of three independent and roughly equal branches of government, also depends greatly on openness and honesty in communication between those branches.
These elementary principles are corrupted, if not negated altogether, by the far-reaching government secrecy system that is one of the most pernicious legacies of the Cold War.
There has always been a degree of secrecy in American government. It was always deemed prudent and appropriate, for example, to conceal the details of military planning and engagement.
But with the onset of the Cold War, the government secrecy system expanded dramatically. For the first time, the classifications system promulgated by President Truman in 1951 allowed secrecy to encompass civilians as well as military agencies. A vast government bureaucracy was established in the name of national security that included secret agencies like the National Reconnaissance Office, whose very existence was officially a secret until last year (1992). Its roughly $5 billon annual budget is still
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