Ellsberg, Kissinger, and the cultural danger of extreme secrecy in government
by David Atkins
I recently came across an old Kevin Drum column from 2010 that deserves more attention in the wake of the NSA revelations. There’s a corrosive cultural problem in government when there are too many secrets known by too few: those with knowledge of the secrets tend to be unpersuadable by those without said knowledge. Elite cliques begin to develop, their members start to believe that only they know all the answers, and anyone with an outside perspective becomes shunned as Not Serious.
Those who have read Chris Hayes’ book Twilight of the Elites will recognize this phenomenon in all aspects of our society’s elites. But I imagine that the phenomenon is at its worst among the privileged few who get to know the scary and exhilarating intelligence details unknown to the rest of us.
Daniel Ellsberg highlighted this danger in a conversation with Henry Kissinger, recounted in his book Secrets:
“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.
“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.
“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools.
“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.
“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.
“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”
….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet.
It is possible that the world is so terrifying that anyone privileged enough to know the details would support what the NSA is doing. But the problem is that none of us mere mortals have any information on that one way or another, and asking us to just trust the privileged few is wholly unacceptable. It’s not just that it’s a violation of the basic principles of our democracy. It’s also that financial, military and governmental elites haven’t exactly had the greatest track record. There’s no reason to believe them when they say they need these powers, and there’s no reason that even if they’re sincere in their conviction that their wisdom and judgment is superior to that of the wisdom of crowds.
Too much classified information in too few hands is dangerous. Not just as a matter of abuse of power, but also as a matter of corrosive culture. If terrorists came within inches of perpetrating another 9/11 and were only stopped because the government happened to read their emails in a broad sweep with only the wisp of a FISA warrant, then that’s something we should know about. It’s information our government should trust us with. If not, the elites need to stop pretending they need overreaching authority over our lives.
It’s a matter of trust. Right now trust in the wisdom of our elites is at an all-time low, and for good reason. If the people in power won’t trust the public with scary information, why should we trust them with scary new powers?
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