Legitimate State Secrets Extremely Rare

The website WikiLeaks has published an Afghan War Diary which contains over 91,000 reports documenting our abject failure and totally reprehensible inhumane behavior in Afghanistan. The founder of this invaluable source of information, Julian Assange, granted Der Spiegelan interview. The magazine asked him if any state secrets were lawful and Assange replied that “there is a legitimate role for secrecy, and there is a legitimate role for openness. Unfortunately, those who commit abuses against humanity or against the law find abusing legitimate secrecy to conceal their abuse all too easy. People of good conscience have always revealed abuses by ignoring abusive strictures. It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something. It is a whistleblower or a dissident who decides to reveal it. Our job is to make sure that these individuals are protected, the public is informed and the historical record is not denied.”