Secrecy is a form of regulation. There are many such forms, but a general division can be made between those dealing with domestic affairs and those dealing with foreign affairs. In the first category, it is generally the case that government prescribes what the citizen may do. In the second category, it is generally the case that government prescribes what the citizen may know.
In the United States, secrecy is an institution of the administrative state that developed during the great conflicts of the twentieth century. It is distinctive primarily in that it is all but unexamined. There is a formidable literature on regulation of the public mode, virtually none on secrecy. Rather, there is a considerable literature, but it is mostly secret. Indeed, the modes of secrecy remain for the most part-well, secret. On inquiry there are regularities: patterns that fit well enough with what we have learned about other forms of regulation. But there has been so little inquiry that the actors involved seem hardly to know the set roles they play. Most important, they seem never to know the damage they can do. This is something more than inconveniencing to the citizen. At times, in the name of national security, secrecy has put that very security in harm's way.
How did secrecy and bureaucracy become so entwined-a vast secrecy system almost wholly hidden from view? What has it cost (no less than what it has achieved)? A clearer picture is emerging.
The Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995 created the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy to conduct "an investigation into all matters in any way related to any legislation, executive order, regulation, practice, or procedure relating to classified information or granting security clearances." In truth, apart from atomic energy matters, there was only one such general statute-the Espionage Act of 1917 at the outset of World War I. As for inquiry, there had been but one other commission, the Commission on Government Security, created in 1955. This, of course, came in the aftermath of the Communists-in-government issue which convulsed American politics following World War II. The first commission, however, added nothing to our knowledge of that subject, and many of the issues were still out there. It seemed a good place for the new commission to begin.
It happened that the National Security Agency, our signals outfit-successor to the Army Signals Intelligence Service and the army security agency and under the leadership of its deputy director, William P. Crowell-was beginning to think it time to reveal some of the things that the army had learned about Soviet espionage in those years. After all, the Soviet Union had disappeared, and the code-breakers who had decrypted the secret messages were in their late years, still unacknowledged. And now there was this new commission. In short order it was determined to turn the Venona decryptions, as they were called, over to the commission. ("Venona" is a made-up word designating a Soviet code.)
In July 1995 the first set of documents was released at a ceremony at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and the story began to unfold. On February 1, 1943, the Signals Intelligence Service had begun transcribing Soviet cables (mostly KGB) sent between Moscow and the United States (mainly to and from contacts in New York and Washington). The cables were both coded and enciphered, and it remains a marvel that any were ever broken. Not many were: only about 2,900 in all, a fraction of the many thousands intercepted. The arduous decoding work began in 1943 and was done at Arlington Hall, a former girls' school in Virginia; the setup resembled that of the Ultra project at Bletchley Park in wartime Britain, where German signals were intercepted and decoded.
But unlike the British team, which had a smuggled copy of the encoding machine used by the Germans, the American team had only the coded cables themselves. Led by Meredith Knox Gardner, the code-breakers put in much hard work during World War II, but they broke nothing. In the summer of 1946, however, Gardner managed to extract a phrase in a KGB message sent from New York to Moscow on August 10, 1944. Next was a report on the presidential election of 1944. Then, on December 20, 1946, a cable sent to Moscow two years earlier. It contained a list of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. government project that developed the first atomic bombs.
This decoded cable and the ones that followed were a revelation. As the monograph accompanying the 1995 release of the documents puts it, "The Venona decrypts were ... to show the accuracy of Chambers' and Bentley's disclosures"-that is, the accuracy of the information about Soviet espionage that Whittaker Chambers (beginning in 1939) and Elizabeth Bentley (beginning in 1945) had provided to the American government. As more cables were decoded, General Carter W. Clarke of army intelligence informed the FBI liaison officer that "the Army had begun to break into Soviet intelligence service traffic, and that traffic indicated a massive Soviet espionage effort in the U.S."
"Massive" is a relative term. In all, the Venona decryptions came up with some two hundred names or code names of Americans who were passing secret information to Soviet agents. There were neighborhoods in New York City in which this number would have seemed surprisingly small, such were the politics of that time and place. (Possibly the most important of the atomic spies was a nineteen-year-old from the West Side of Manhattan, Theodore Alvin Hall, who betrayed his country's secrets quite on his own initiative. Indeed, he had to go looking for a Soviet agent to give the secrets to.) On the other hand, two hundred Communist spies might have seemed chilling to someone living in Kansas City, Missouri. Given that not a few Republicans were then attacking the New Deal as being soft on Communism, the charge could easily have been dismissed as domestic politics. Perhaps especially by the president of the United States, a Democrat from Missouri.
National politics and national security are always to some extent interrelated, but in the years of the Truman presidency the relationship became problematic. Trust leeched out of the political system, loyalties waned, betrayal became common. Communism-as an indigenous force, as yet another manifestation of diaspora politics, or as an instrument of Soviet policy-achieved astonishing influence not in its own right, much less on its own behalf, but as an agent for poisoning American politics. The effects were felt for a generation or more; the reverberations are felt even today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Government secrecy, as the commission was discovering, played a large role in all this.
Begin with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director, J. Edgar Hoover. At that time a prudent operative reported every hint of danger, and did so immediately. Consider Hoover's letter of May 29, 1946, sent to the director of what was then a powerful federal agency and meant to be shared with Truman; the commission retrieved the document, until now unpublished, from the Harry S. Truman Library.
Federal Bureau of Investigation United States Department of Justice Washington 25, D.C. May 29, 1946 PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL BY SPECIAL MESSENGER
Honorable George E. Allen Director Reconstruction Finance Corporation Washington, D.C.
Dear George:
I thought the President and you would be interested in the following information with respect to certain high Government officials operating an alleged espionage network in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Soviet Government.
Information has been furnished to this Bureau through a source believed to be reliable that there is an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington operating with the view of obtaining all information possible with reference to atomic energy, its specific use as an instrument of war, and the commercial aspects of the energy in peacetime, and that a number of high Government officials whose identities will be set out hereinafter are involved. It has been alleged that the following departments and agencies of the United States Government handle the problem and current development of atomic energy and among these departments and agencies, the United States secret of atomic energy is held in trust. The names of the individuals in each department or agency who control such matters have been furnished as follows:
State Department-Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson Assistant to the Under Secretary of State-Herbert Marks Former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy War Department-Assistant Secretary of War-Howard C. Peterson Commerce Department-Secretary of Commerce-Henry A. Wallace Bureau of the Budget-Paul H. Appleby George Schwartzwalder Bureau of Standards-Dr. Edward U. Condon United Nations Organization-Alger Hiss Abe Feller Paul Appleby (who is being considered for transfer from the Bureau of the Budget to the United Nations Organization) Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion-James R. Newman Advisors to the Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy-James R. Newman Dr. Edward U. Condon
The individual who furnished this information has reported that all of the above individuals mentioned are noted for their pro-Soviet leanings, mentioning specifically Alger Hiss of the United Nations Organization, Paul Appleby and George Schwartzwalder of the Bureau of the Budget, Dr. Condon of the Bureau of Standards, and John J. McCloy of the State Department.
The informant has stated that the McMahon Committee headed by Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut is charged with formulating the policy concerning atomic energy[,] and serving as advisors to the Committee are Dr. Condon of the Bureau of Standards, who, the informant states, is nothing more or less than an espionage agent in disguise, and James R. Newman, an employee of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion who is known to the informant to be a personal friend of Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, who, you may recall, is one of the principal individuals known to have operated as an agent of the Soviet Government in U.S. Government offices for a considerable time until December, 1944. It is known that Silvermaster obtained information through his associates in a Russian espionage network and such information was turned over to the Soviet Government. The informant has indicated that Newman is also a friend of the news commentator Raymond Gram Swing and columnist Marquis Childs. Newman is also reported to be the so-called ringleader of this particular Soviet espionage network and through his employment with the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, he had access to material flowing from the White House. The informant stated that through Dr. Edward Condon at the Bureau of Standards, Newman has access to technical data concerning atomic energy. The informant further stated that Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace knows of the background of Dr. Condon but condones his further employment in this highly strategic and important position.
James Newman allegedly obtains from the War Department through the cooperation of Assistant Secretary of War Peterson highly technical information on the atomic bomb itself and all matters relating generally to atomic energy. According to the informant, Newman has a direct line to Assistant Secretary Peterson's office.
With reference to the State Department, it was reported that Newman is in personal and daily contact with Dean Acheson, Herbert Marks, and on some occasions with John J. McCloy, and therefore, any knowledge of atomic energy and international relations with reference to it are immediately known to him. In so far as the international picture is concerned with respect to atomic energy, it was reported that Newman is in a position to obtain this information from Alger Hiss of the State Department who holds the position of advisor to Mr. Stettinius, the American Representative to the United Nations Organization.
Concerning the Bureau of the Budget, the informant reported that Paul Appleby and sometimes George Schwartzwalder pass upon the recommendations of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion which are made to the President concerning the necessary appropriations to carry on experimental operations concerning atomic energy and particularly its relative position to that of a large Army and Navy. It was pointed out that in almost all cases the final decision at the Bureau of the Budget on such matters is passed upon by Paul Appleby.
The informant has drawn the conclusion that the entire setup of the McMahon Committee to investigate and recommend legislation on atomic energy and its use is a scheme to make available information concerning the atomic bomb and atomic energy, and that it all amounts to Soviet espionage in this country directed toward the obtaining for the Soviet Union the knowledge possessed by the United States concerning atomic energy and specifically the atomic bomb.
The informant stated that technical and exacting information which Newman desires to pass on to Russian principals is made available to Mr. Silvermaster, or, in those matters of a highly technical nature, Dr. Edward Condon of the Bureau of Standards contacts Silvermaster directly. The news commentator Raymond Gram Swing, according to the informant, is utilized for subtle propaganda with reference to agitation for release of atomic energy to the Allied Powers and that the same use is made of Marquis Childs, a feature Washington newspaper writer.
The informant is of the opinion that the entire setup has a use other than that of espionage for the Soviet Government, namely, the promotion of pro-Soviet propaganda, which, when reduced to its simplest form, advances the argument "why keep a large Army and Navy when the use of atomic energy eliminates the necessity for such a large force." In Government circles and among those handling the question of atomic energy, the unanimous argument of all and especially of those mentioned above is in agreement that a large Army and Navy are not necessary to the United States as the United States has exclusive knowledge and the "know how" of the atomic bomb.
It is known to this Bureau that Dr. Condon is a personal friend of
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and although Silvermaster is presently under
investigation by this Bureau, no information has been developed to
substantiate the fact that Condon has turned over any information of a
confidential nature to Silvermaster. It has also been made known to this
Bureau through various sources in the past that the political views of
Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of War Howard
C.
Continues...
Excerpted from SECRECY by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.