Secrecy Wars: National Security, Privacy, and the Public's Right to Know

Military Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Timothy Edward Murphy

Philip H. Melanson, Brassey's Inc., Herndon, VA, 2001, 320 pages, $27.50.

In Secrecy Wars: National Security, Privacy, and the Public's Right to Know, Philip H. Melanson explains how citizens can access executive-branch information by understanding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act. He feels that every citizen should understand and use these methods of obtaining information as a check and balance to government authority.

Because of the conflict between government security and the public's fight-to-know, citizens must understand government issues so they can advise their legislators how to vote. Melanson, arguing that the executive branch might operate outside the law if not given some type of oversight, provides evidence of the government's inappropriate behavior by citing former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's targeting of Martin Luther King; former President Lyndon B. Johnson's lying to the American public during the Vietnam crisis; the lack of a thorough investigation into Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968; and the use of intelligence assets to track domestic groups protesting the Vietnam war during the early 1970s.

Melanson acknowledges the need for government secrecy to protect national security and shows that across the executive branch, specifically the FBI and CIA, many agencies used the national-security stamp to hide mistakes and inappropriate behavior. When these agencies release information, complete pages are often blackened out. Also, the same request might result in receiving 20 pages of information one time and 3 pages the next, suggesting that there is no consistency in handling requests. And often, agencies will not respond to requests in accordance with FOIA and Privacy Act requirements, forcing the requestor to use legal means or congressional contacts to force the agency into compliance. Finally, these agencies allow access to requestors only if they are departmental persons. For example, when former CIA director Robert M. Gates wrote From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1997), he had access to information that the public could not have obtained.

To remedy the problem of obtaining information, Melanson outlines 10 changes lawmakers must make to ensure that citizens have the information they need. Two notable changes would be that after 20 years all classified information automatically would be declassified and that the standard for withholding information be changed from data that "could" cause harm to data that "would significantly" cause harm to national security. The problem with the second recommendation is determining what information would fall into which category.

Secrecy Wars is a useful book for military professionals, especially those in the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Although the laws to increase public access to records are unlikely to change anytime soon, this book opens the issue for debate.

MAJ Timothy Edward Murphy, USA, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas