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Government secrecy is often portrayed as antithetical to transparency¹ as well as an affront to the general right to know, citizen participation, administrative oversight, and democracy itself.² Furthermore, government secrecy is connected to “much broader questions regarding the structure and performance of democratic systems” (Galnoor, 1977, p. 278), and in instances, is “more dangerous to democracy than the practices they conceal” (Fulbright, 1971).³ This condition has led to what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1987) describes as a secrecy state, whichhas extended the secrecy system far beyond its legitimate bounds. In doing so, the target is far less to prevent the disclosure of information to enemy governments than to prevent the disclosure of information to the American Congress, press and people. For governments have discovered that secrecy is a source of power and an efficient way of covering up the embarrassments, blunders, follies and crimes of the ruling regime. (p. 5)

Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the foundations of U.S. information policy were being set after World War II, wartime practices were remade and made permanent in a crisis atmosphere, with the establishment of a classification system (essentially the same one used to this day) by executive order, as well, as the passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and the National Security Act in 1947. However, even as the practice of official secrecy took root, the United States took the lead in formalizing standards of openness by statute, beginning with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act and culminating in the passage (and 1974 strengthening) of the Freedom of Information Act. This article traces the development of U.S. information policy since World War II and describes the impact of official secrecy on decision making and democratic practice more generally.

It is genuinely accepted that the withholding of sensitive information by the federal government, be it relating to intelligence, military or foreign policy matters, will invariably serve to preclude or minimize damage to our nation's well-being. However, often overlooked is the impact that official secrecy has upon the decision-making process employed by national leaders. This overview examines the harm that official government secrecy can inflict upon our U.S. national security, through the corrupting influence it has on national policy decisions. Using the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as an apt lesson, this overview goes on to examine the impact that official secrecy had on many of the post-9/11 decisions made by U.S. national leaders.

In the twentieth century, the U.S. government began expanding its size and power and keeping more information secret. Executive branch officials began spying on Americans, plotting to kill foreign leaders, and deliberately deceiving Congress and the media. As the government began to conduct real conspiracies, many Americans began to suspect it of even worse crimes, like the mass murder of American citizens to provide a pretext for war. Until the federal government becomes committed to transparency and openness, these toxic conspiracy theories will continue to pollute the body politic.

This chapter argues that the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud provide a useful methodology for the study of government secrecy. The chapter makes two specific points. First, Freud viewed the human mind as a highly complex censoring device, which systematically censors certain types of information that embarrasses the patient, while it makes available without impediment more innocuous types of information that flatter the patient's image. It is argued that governmental bureaucracies work like this too, as they systematically censor information that is embarrassing to the state and state officials, while they make available information that flatters the state. Secondly, Freud's theories provide insight into how researchers can cut through systematic censorship and gain access to hidden information. Specifically, Freud shows that patients periodically slip and release censored information to the psychoanalyst. Similarly, state officials too will slip and will accidentally release information to historical researchers who study public policies.

This chapter focuses on a critical issue in cyber intelligence in the United States (US) that concerns the engagement of state-owned or state-controlled entities with overseeing citizen’s activity in cyberspace. The emphasis in the discussion is placed on the constitutionality of state actions and the shifting boundaries in which the state can act in the name of security to protect its people from the nation’s enemies. A second piece of this discussion is which state actors and agencies can control the mechanisms by which this sensitive cyber information is collected, stored, and if needed, acted upon. The most salient case with regard to this debate is that of Edward Snowden. It reveals the US government’s abuses of this surveillance machinery prompting major debates around the topics of privacy, national security, and mass digital surveillance. When observing the response to Snowden’s disclosures one can ask what point of view is being ignored, or what questions are not being answered. By considering the silence as a part of our everyday language we can improve our understanding of mediated discourses. Recommendations on cyber-intelligence reforms in response to Snowden’s revelations – and whether these are in fact practical in modern, high-technology societies such as the US – follow.

On his first full day in office, President Obama issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government (White House, 2009a) committing his Administration to create an unprecedented level of openness in government and indicating his belief that government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative. This chapter examines the Obama Administration through June 2010, and looks at how closely the administration is hewing to its promises, in the context of the legacy of secrecy it inherited.

In acknowledgment of the demands of studying state secrecy, this chapter asks how novel possibilities for knowing can be fashioned. It does so in relation to the place of secrecy within international diplomatic and security negotiations associated with humanitarian disarmament. A conversational account is given regarding how “cluster bombs” become subject to a major international ban in 2008. Tensions, uncertainties, and contradictions associated with knowing and conveying matters that cannot be wholly known or conveyed are worked through. With these moves, a form of writing is sought that sensitizes readers to how absences figure within debates about social problems and the study of those debates, as well as how ignorance born out of secrecy helps secure an understanding of the world. Uncertainties, no-go areas, and blind spots are looked to as analytical and practical resources.

In this chapter, the post-disaster handling of the British Petroleum Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is analyzed according to the concept of “Public Reserve.” Public Reserve extends the theory of privacy from the individual into the context of corporate behavior and environmental regulation and management by government. Secrecy is viewed as a form of privacy.