;

secrecy



  • 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. 



  • "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."



  • 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.



  • 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.