Report on Government Secrecy from the Floor of the AHA

On Thursday I asked four government officials who deal daily with secret documents about the significance of the unauthorized disclosure of American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks.

There was silence in the meeting room at the Marriott Chicago Downtown. Then Carl Ashley, who oversees declassification in the State Department’s office of the historian, spoke with succinct severity:

“Are you familiar with the concept of the third rail? That’s how WikiLeaks is viewed in the Department of State,“ he said, not a word more. He was referring to “third rail” as a topic to be avoided because of its offensive nature rather than part of an electric railway.

Few heard the archival insiders, including one from the Central Intelligence Agency, discussing American state secrecy. That’s too bad. There were wonderful tidbits, like how our backlog of declassified documents is 400 million pages, and a serious discussion of whether we go overboard with secrecy....