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Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. Secrecy: The American Experience. Yale University Press, P.O. Box 209040, New Haven CT 06520-9040 USA. 1998. 262 pp. $22.50.
As the senior U. S. Senator from New York, first elected in 1976, who was previously a member of the cabinet or sub-cabinet of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, and chairman of the bipartisan Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy since it was established by Congress in 1994, Moynihan is uniquely qualified to discuss this subject.
He offers an eye-opening survey of the history of secrecy as government policy, from President Woodrow Wilson's directives in World War I to the present. He explores how bureaucratic secrecy developed in American...