Secrets and Liars

 

 

Among our recent news stories has been the apparent theft of highly classified material by a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in Massachusetts, who then allegedly shared it with his video-gaming buddies. The young man was arrested almost immediately.

He is said to be one of more than a MILLION with legal access to such information. Many of us have trouble keeping secrets among our co-workers or family members. How do we expect to trust a million people to do so?

There’s a scene from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! about the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. If I’m recalling the story correctly, two military intelligence officers, one from the Army and another from the Navy, are staying alert for signs of an attack, as it will fall to them to put out the warning to a special group of top officials, including the President. The two go into a room where there is a locked cabinet on the wall, and one of them opens it with a key. This reveals a small blackboard containing the names of only a dozen or so authorized to receive the highest-level secret information. How quaint was that?

Breaches of secrecy are almost common now. Some folks think that people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are heroes for revealing information they thought the public should know. I still haven’t made up my mind about that. But over-classification is indeed a problem.

Some information goes back such a long way in history that it’s hard to see how making it public would harm anyone. I saw a PBS American Experience episode recently about Elizabeth Friedman, an Illinois woman who basically created the US codebreaking program used during two World Wars. Her work saved many thousands of servicemembers’ lives, but the details of it were kept secret for decades, and in the meantime, no less a figure than J. Edgar Hoover took credit for much of what she had done.

Perhaps the most famous secrets revolve around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, of which this year is the 60th anniversary. Most related classified materials have been released now, but not without redactions. The conspiracy theories on this event turned into a genuine industry, and for some, it all may never end.

We often hear it said that if you or I were found to have even one classified piece of paper or digital file in our possession illegally, we would be in jail the next day. Well, most of us, anyway.