secrecy

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• SOURCE: CSPAN
  3/7/2023
  

  Matthew Connelly Presents Digital Lessons on the History of Government Secrecy

  Historian Matthew Connelly offers a series of talks and lesson plans for social studies teachers about the origins and significance of government secrecy, classified information, and freedom of information. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/9/2023
  

  The Classified Info Uproar Shows Americans' Distrust of Secrecy

  by Katlyn Marie Carter

  "This suspicion of secrecy is why the way in which we handle classified material matters — especially if American leaders want to maintain trust in our democracy."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/14/2023
  

  Why Do "Secret" Documents Keep Showing Up in the Wrong Places?

  by Matthew Connelly

  The near-unilateral authority of presidents to declare material secret in the name of national security is intoxicating and it's nearly impossible for the chief executive to resist abusing it, creating not a "deep state" but a "dark state" of secrecy and impunity. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  1/17/2023
  

  As Biden Faces Documents Controversy, is it Time to Ask Why So Much is Classified?

  Former Pentagon Special Counsel Oona Hathaway says that an excess of classification makes government accountability difficult to achieve, as well as contributing to potential criminality. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/3/2022
  

  "Archives Rat" John Prados Punctured Military Secrecy to Write History

  "Running through all his work was the contention that records of intelligence and covert activities represented a sort of historical dark matter: a vast amount of material that, while invisible in conventional narratives, could, if revealed, radically shift our understanding of the past."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/16/2022
  

  A Decision to Declare an Already-Public History Secret is Bad for the Public

  The State Department's official history of US-Soviet relations includes a military intelligence officer's recollection of a 1983 exercise that nearly triggered nuclear war. Why has the government pulled that official history and restricted the original memo? 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10/18/2021
  

  Executive Privilege was out of Control Before Steve Bannon Claimed It

  by Timothy Noah

  Perhaps Steve Bannon is doing a favor for the cause of government accountability by showing the outlandishness of the entire doctrine, which has managed to pass from Dwight Eisenhower's strategy for stonewalling Joseph McCarthy to a hallowed totem of the out-of-control presidency.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/16/2020
  

  Will Trump Burn the Evidence?

  by Jill Lepore

  Reckoning with the Trump adminstration's actions and assigning moral or criminal sanction to any misdeeds will probably be compromised by the destruction or failure to maintain presidential records.