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Product Description
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan here presents a fascinating account of the development of secrecy as a mode of regulation in American government since World War I-how it was born, how world events shaped it, how it has adversely affected momentous political decisions and events, and how it has eluded efforts to curtail or end it. Selected as a 1998 Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review Selected as one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review "A withering account of the Government's bottomless appetite for 'intelligence'-that is, for collecting, concealing, suppressing, and manipulating it. It is a dismaying tale, though Moynihan has told it with uncommon liveliness and a mordant wit."-Sam Tanenhaus, New York Times Book Review "Moynihan has provided us with an interesting history of secrecy in the United States, and a provocative meditation on the patterns and implications of secrecy in the government."-Claire Berlinski, National Review "Moynihan astutely describes how our bureaucracies quickly learned that having information that others want is a source of power. The senator enlivens his book with fascinating historical examples of how the thirst for secrecy is seemingly insatiable."-Stansfield Turner, Christian Science Monitor
Amazon.com Review
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) was one of the first members of the United States government openly to predict the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union--and, by extension, statist communism--as far back as the late '70s, as political historian Richard Gid Powers reminds readers in a lengthy introduction (comprising approximately one-fifth of Secrecy's total length). Had we spent less time trying to gather secret information about the Soviets and more time openly discussing rather easily interpretable data, Sen. Moynihan argues, we might have been far less paranoid about the supposed Red menace. The problem, he writes, lies in the essential nature of government secrecy: "Departments and agencies hoard information, and the government becomes a kind of market. Secrets become organizational assets, never to be shared save in exchange for another organization's assets.... The system costs can be enormous. In the void created by absent or withheld information, decisions are either made poorly or not at all."
Sen. Moynihan draws upon several incidents to make his point, from the Army's deliberate withholding from President Harry Truman of information about Soviet spy rings to the disastrous 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to the Iran-Contra affair. The senator knows whereof he speaks; he was for eight years a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Secrecy ably combines hands-on experience and historical perspective, calling for the United States to take advantage of the new era in international relations to implement policies that once again encourage the open, uninhibited flow of information among government agencies and, whenever possible, the public. --Ron Hogan
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