War, Classified Information, and the Public

By George W. Carey

The recent flap over the WikiLeak disclosures reminded me of lessons I drew from my experiences as a communications officer in the Marines with top secret crypto clearance. When I was with the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean during the period of Hungarian revolt and the Suez crisis I would often have the responsibility of deciphering what amounted to a long, top secret, daily intelligence digest. When finished I would take it around to designated high ranking officers. They would read it and then initial it. After my shift, I would often go to the wardroom for a cup of coffee where I would pick up and read the latest issue of one of the American weekly magazines – Time, US News. Invariably I found that these magazines reported on all of the top secret items contained in the daily intelligence digest – at least all those of importance.

As a consequence I was not surprised that one of the initial reactions to WikiLeak’s disclosures was simply, “there’s nothing new here.” I might add the same can be said of the Pentagon Papers. ( I recall observing this at the time of their release, a fact which led me to the issues I explore below.) That classified materials, even in the top secret category, contains little, if anything, that is not in the public arena is also consistent with the well known tendency of government to classify just about everything. This practice, too, I was able to confirm from my tour of duty.

Now, by way of clearing the path for what follows, I do not mean to deny that there is a need for secrecy, but this need usually relates in one way or another to relative discrete items of information that involve military operations during hostilities and for reasons that are obvious. For instance, we didn’t want the Japanese to know that we had broken their code or the Germans to know of our D-day plans. But my experience and subsequent events have led me to wonder about the role of intelligence in a wider and somewhat different, albeit highly crucial, context. Specifically, I came to entertain substantial doubts about an argument or proposition which I first encountered at the time of the Vietnam War and which was later used in the controversy preceding our invasion of Iraq that runs as follows: ordinary citizens don’t have all the relevant intelligence at their disposal to make a truly informed decision, but the president does. Thus, so the argument runs, we must trust the president to make the right decision in light of more complete information; information to which citizens are not privy. And so, too, with the conduct of war; the president and his military advisers know best.