Watergate Blowback

For all its selective history, aggregated statistics, dated anecdotes, and anecdotal dates, Matt Welch's "Watergate Blowback" (August/September) manages to avoid almost completely the central issues of the last three years, if not the last 13: the fact that America is under attack by fanatical terrorists whose widely trumpeted goal is to murder at least 4 million Americans and destroy much of our territory, possessions, and economy. Could it be that some of those millions of documents Welch laments being classified would help terrorists discover and use vulnerabilities in our nuclear facilities, water treatment plants, or other vital infrastructure?

Welch manages to make multiple innuendoes about the Bush administration's alleged propensity toward secrecy for secrecy's sake--or worse, for purposes of corruption, lying, and political advantage. He gives no hint of legitimate purposes or objectives of any kind. Yet Welch offers not a single example of those crimes and misdemeanors tied to this administration. Instead he cites the 1971 Pentagon Papers leak (33 years ago), unspecified 1948 accident reports (56 years ago), and the August 2001 briefing that ultimately revealed nothing of significance.

While it may well be tedious to have to show that a document was wrongly classified, it would be far, far worse to have terrorists attack vulnerabilities the document exposed.

Jeffrey E. Levinger

San Francisco, CA

Matt Welch replies: Many advocates of openness, including myself, believe that declassification will enhance, not endanger, national security. As Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned in an August 26 New York Times op-ed, "Too often, Congress and the American people lack the best information--in the form of declassified intelligence and national security materials--to ensure that the job [of national security] is done right. The United States cannot preserve an open and democratic society when one branch of government has a free hand to shut down public access to information."

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