Volume 46, Number 2 · February 4, 1999
The Black Arts
By Thomas Powers
Secrecy: The American Experience
by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Yale University Press, 262 pp., $22.50
Bay of Pigs Declassified
edited by Peter Kornbluh
New Press, 339 pp., $17.95 (paper)
There are secrets and there are secrets, and it is distinguishing between the two that has challenged some of the best minds of our time—currently Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's—to come up with a workable commonsense approach to keeping secrets. Such an approach would grant the United States government power to remain silent about the few genuine secrets that matter, while compelling it to disgorge in reasonably good time the oceans of paper stamped 'secret' solely in order to relieve officials of the awkward duty of explaining why they have done, predicted, or recommended something dumb.
Review, 5769 words
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