The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets

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 ControlBefore 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.