What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets
August 1, 2022
A professor of international and global history at Columbia University, Connelly has analyzed millions of state documents via cutting-edge data science techniques to discover what the U.S. government does not want us to know and how much power we have allowed to it. His conclusion: state secrecy is a given in the United States.
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November 1, 2022
Connelly teamed up with data scientists at Columbia University, where he is a professor of history, to analyze the U.S. government's system of document classification and storage in order to determine how it might be streamlined to release needlessly classified information while protecting genuinely sensitive material. What they discovered was unnerving: a highly fallible, exorbitantly expensive (over $18 billion annually, by Connelly's estimate), virtually uncontrollable system that ultimately renders its administrators unaccountable to the American taxpayers funding it. The problems revealed range from lack of civilian oversight of the U.S. military (especially the nuclear arsenal) to needlessly massive U.S. arms expenditures based on Soviet disinformation and competition among America's military branches, to administrators drawn largely from a self-interested business community, and, now, to surveillance that can reach deep into the lives of everyday Americans. "We need to start asking ourselves a different question," Connelly writes. ""What do we, the people, need to know to do our job as citizens to keep our government accountable?" One hopes this book will generate serious discussion of the issue.
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January 9, 2023
Columbia University historian Connelly (Fatal Misconception) forcefully critiques the “exponential growth in government secrecy” since WWII. Drawing on his work at the History Lab, which uses advanced data mining techniques to “sift and sort through” millions of declassified documents for insights into “what the government did not want us to know, and why they did not want us to know it,” Connelly argues that the “relentless” and “massive” accumulation of secret information has “served the interests of people who wanted to avoid democratic accountability.” Examining declassified documents and metadata related to nuclear weapons, cryptography, UFO sightings, battle plans, the 1954 Guatemala coup (long believed to have been coordinated by the Eisenhower administration at the behest of the United Fruit Company), and more, Connelly contends that the rise of state secrets has undermined government efficiency, buttressed the military-industrial complex, and fostered conspiracy thinking. He also contends that the more information is classified, the harder it is to track and protect, making it vulnerable to exploitation, and highlights arbitrary and ineffective policies, including the classification of material after it’s already entered the public domain. Though the data analysis and history lessons can be dense, Connelly enlivens the narrative with sharp character sketches and acerbic wit. It’s an impassioned and well-informed wake-up call.
December 1, 2022
Connelly (global history, Columbia Univ.; Fatal Misconception) advocates for the necessity of a declassification engine to tame the U.S. government's vast amount of secret, classified information. Knowing that this is a tall order, the author meticulously makes his case, while also outlining the history of classified information and deftly illustrating the deep symbiosis between capitalism and national security strategy. Connelly states this emerged during World War II, with Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan Project, and the inception of the Cold War acting as catalysts. Reasons for keeping parts of the public record classified include protecting sensitive information about valuable allies and hiding governmental incompetence. The mutual enmity between some civilian leaders--including presidents--and the military brass directly led to the Vietnam quagmire. The global war on terror, with its nebulous focus on national security, gave the government broad, unprecedented powers to surveil citizens. The information age has added to the glut of data captured and parsed by agencies such as the National Security Agency. Connelly also considers the banality of secrecy, making clear that much of the government's classified information is mundane and unproductive. VERDICT Perfect for readers intrigued by the intersection of politics and history.--Barrie Olmstead
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Starred review from November 15, 2022
The U.S. government is hopelessly awash in secret information, and this gripping history describes how we got that way and lays out the dismal consequences. Connelly, a professor of international history at Columbia, writes that more than 28 million cubic feet of secret files rest in archives across the country, with far more in digital server farms and black sites. Nonetheless, government secrets are not secure. "Washington has been shattered by security breaches and inundated with leaks," writes the author. Global hackers often access classified files, and dissenters (Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, et al.) regularly extract material. Readers may be surprised when Connelly points out that the first 150 years of American history were essentially secret-free. Even diplomats often avoided encoding their communication. A new era began in 1931 with the groundbreaking for a national archive, and Franklin Roosevelt appointed the first archivist three years later. At this point, the "dark state" began its epic growth, which Connelly recounts in 10 unsettling chapters and the traditional yet still dispiriting how-to-fix-it conclusion. The author delivers a wild, page-turning ride packed with intelligence mistakes, embarrassing decisions, expensive failed weapons programs, and bizarre research that has ranged from the silly to the murderous. A large percentage of classified information, including the famous WikiLeaks revelations, isn't secret but available in old newspapers. Everyone agrees that democracy requires transparent government. Congress has passed many laws restricting unnecessary classification and requiring declassification after a long period, but they are often dead letters. Officials occasionally required to review records for "automatic" declassification almost always keep them secret. Plus, the bloated archives are so underfunded that staff members have insufficient technical capacity to recover historical records. Destroying them en masse is cheaper, and this is being done. Interestingly, Connelly points out that historians are more likely to study World War II and the early Cold War because 1970s and later material is largely locked away. Yet more evidence, brilliantly delivered, of the extent of the U.S. government's dysfunction.
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