Government secrets — continued

WikiLeaks turned into whacky leaks as more diplomatic cables were disclosed containing unflattering portrayals of foreign officials. One leader is “feckless,” another “thin-skinned.” What has the attorney general so upset that he is conducting an investigation into possible law violations? Which laws? And why is much of the media—usually pushing for openness—so abashed?

The disclosures to date seem to portray the past and present administrations as genuinely at the work of foreign affairs — dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat and the closing of Guantánamo, along with wheeling and dealing with parochial matters. Shouldn’t the public know that Korea is selling missiles to Iran? And that, in Afghanistan, “bribery, extortion, and embezzlement are the norm”?

One of the concerns is the embarrassment of disclosing the deliberative part of governance. Lord Claremont wrote in 1640 that it would be wrong for government officials to be embarrassed by brash or inconsiderate comments. Free informal expressions of ideas would be inhibited, debate stifled, independent thought chilled. As a former government lawyer (in the Air Force and at the Justice Department in the Kennedy administration), I’d have been shocked if inside brainstorming sessions became public. Our public actions and comments, of course, would be open to public examination.

The Nixon tapes made the distinction clear between criminal conversations within the executive branch and ordinary pre-decisional communications. The arguments before the Supreme Court and its decisions are clearly public — the justices’ prior deliberations should not be, Bob Woodward’s The Brothers notwithstanding. In diplomatic work, 99 percent is pre-decisional, which raises unique questions of line drawing between what should and should not be kept secret.

So far, the WikiLeaks made public do not distinguish between deliberative (most published so far are) and public actions of diplomatic officials. While Wiki’s leader, Julian Assange, seems to be a poor choice of champion of open government, major reputable press organizations like The New York Times agreed that most of Wiki’s leaks deserved publication.

Wiki’s disclosures raise an important point. Why was so much of this haul of document classified in the first instance? That question — the overclassification of government documents — is the next blog in this series.


Ronald Goldfarb, attorney, and author of IN CONFIDENCE—When To Protect Secrecy And When To Require Disclosure.

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