The Declassification Engine
What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE • Every day, thousands of new secrets are created by the United States government. What is all this secrecy really for? And whom does it benefit?
“A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of ‘the dark state'.... At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important.” —Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control
Before World War II, transparent government was a proud tradition in the United States. In all but the most serious of circumstances, classification, covert operations, and spying were considered deeply un-American. But after the war, the power to decide what could be kept secret proved too tempting to give up. Since then, we have radically departed from that open tradition, allowing intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories to grow unchecked. Officials insist that only secrecy can keep us safe, but its true costs have gone unacknowledged for too long.
Using the latest techniques in data science, historian Matthew Connelly analyzes a vast trove of state secrets to unearth not only what the government really did not want us to know but also why they didn’t want us to know it. Culling this research and carefully examining a series of pivotal moments in recent history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly sheds light on the drivers of state secrecy— especially incompetence and criminality—and how rampant overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly vital information.
What results is an astonishing study of power: of the greed it enables, of the negligence it protects, and of what we lose as citizens when our leaders cannot be held to account. A crucial examination of the self-defeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nation’s archives, The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
