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2004-10-19
New anti-secrecy book Thanks to Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News for pointing out Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World by William M. Arkin which will be published in January 2005 by Steerforth. Mr Aftergood calls it "perhaps the most concentrated act of defiance of official secrecy policies since Howard Morland wrote about "The H Bomb Secret" [PDF] in The Progressive in 1979, drawing a government injunction to block publication." From the publisher's web page for the book: The war on terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a secrecy explosion. In the 9/11 world the U.S. military and intelligence organizations have created secret plans, programs, and operations at a frenzied pace, each with their own code name. In a perfect world, all of this secrecy would be to protect legitimate secrets from prying foreign eyes. But in researching Code Names, defense analyst William M. Arkin learned that while most genuine secrets remain secret, other activities labeled as secret are either questionable or remain perfectly in the open. The sheer volume and complexity of these operations ensures that the most politically important remain unreported by the press and shielded from the scrutiny of the American electorate. Despite the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the questionable assumptions that led to the war in Iraq and govern the war on terrorism, the U.S. government argues for massive amounts of funding and resources, while at the same time claiming that public accountability would compromise their missions. Arkin didn't accept this argument during the Cold War — when he published two books that revealed U.S. nuclear "secrets" and led directly to a healthier public discussion of a "nuclear warfighting" emerging in the Reagan era — and he is challenging it again today.
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