Secrecy fixation is a threat to democracy and an insult to honest history

A Fixation With Secrecy NYTimes.com Homepage : August 28, 2006 Editorial

In 1971, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird punctuated his plea to Congress for more cold war appropriations with a graphic display of information that revealed the nation on guard with 54 Titan and 1,000 Minuteman nuclear missiles, plus 30 strategic bomber squadrons. In making his case, Mr. Laird exemplified the idea that a little transparency is no drawback in a democracy.

Thirty-five years later, the Bush administration, which has consistently demonstrated an extraordinary mania for secrecy, is blacking that public information out of history. That’s right: it has reclassified the number of missiles and bombers from the Nixon era as some fresh national security secret, even though historians and officials in the old Soviet Union long have had it available on their research shelves.

What strange compulsion drives such “silly secrecy,” as it is aptly described by officials of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library at George Washington University? The archive published a report on how retroactive the administration has become in its obsession with creating secrets out of interesting information. The blacked-out missile and defense policy information dates to the 1960’s. Soviet numbers are left untouched on the open record, while the old American armada is freshly cloaked. What’s next? Classifying Civil War ironclads and cannons?

The missile blackout is the latest symptom of a deepening government illness. National security has become the excuse for efforts to crack down on whistle-blowers and journalists dealing in such vital disclosures as the illicit eavesdropping on Americans. Last spring the director of the National Archives objected to a reclassifying initiative undertaken by intelligence officials that caused 55,000 decades-old pages to vanish from the public record. The process itself was labeled an official secret.

Public recourse has become more difficult: enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act has become slower and more burdensome. The one thing the administration has made no secret is its antipathy to government transparency. The secrecy fixation is a threat to democracy and an insult to honest history.