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 bestselling 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 unAmerican 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 didnt 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 criminalityand 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 selfdefeating nature of secrecy and the dire state of our nations archives The Declassification Engine is a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving the past so that we may secure our future