The film opened with the sight of official-looking papers dropping into the blackness with a minimalist score in the background. It was like something Errol Morris would do with the Philip Glass-like music to boot. Then the talking heads arrive en masse with one claiming that "secrecy prevents effective counter-terrorism". Then another individual makes the case for secrecy. The he said-she said thing would continue throughout the film with talking heads caroming across the screen each speaking for their side.
After a brief explanation of the CIA's creation, for NSA head Mike Levin gives the first lengthy plea for the "securocrats". He gives as an example what happened in the wake of the bombing of the American embassy in Lebanon in April 1983. After that incident, American intelligence officials had a source of intel, the existence of which was leaked to the press. After this made the papers, the source dried up and that October saw the bombing of the military barracks in Lebanon which resulted in the death of 241 servicemen. The publication that the U.S. had an intel source is never definitively linked to the barracks bombing so Levin could very well just be giving a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. We viewers are left to wonder.
Luckily the film is more than just anecdotes being lobbed around. The strength of Secrecy are the times when it delves into the history of the 20th century to show how state secrecy was born. It is the Manhattan Project that's identified as the genesis of the modern conception of the issue. General Leslie R. Groves oversaw the top secret status of our atomic bomb project. He is quoted as saying that he wanted to protect the program, not only from the prying eyes of other countries, but also from those of Congress and other Executive agencies. Here we see information as being power not just for states, but for individual government agencies. According to Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy, Federation of American Scientists this makes secrecy seductive and its maintenance a reflexive action.
Woven into a large portion of the film is the case of the a B-29 bomber that crashed on 6 October 1948. Aboard were civilian engineers performing secret tests. The engineers' widows sought to sue the government over the deaths of their husbands but were unable to because the Air Force refused to release details of the incident saying that the information was essential to national security. The case made it to the Supreme Court which decided 6-3 in favor of the Air Force. This set the precedent for the government to claim secrecy in order to have cases thrown out of court. By 2000, the documents relating to the case were declassified and the daughter of one of the engineers who died in the crash got a hold of them. She discovered that there were no national security issues involved at all. Instead, the Air Force was covering up it negligence relating to the installation of engine parts.
Secrecy raises a lot of important issues but, unfortunately, doesn't probe any of them particularly deeply. There's a lot of talking heads spouting anecdotes and aphorisms in lieu of in-depth examination. Perhaps the topic is just too great for 90 minutes. However, if the filmmakers intention was to make something to get people talking, then I think they've succeeded. Perhaps a couple comments from the film could be used as starting points for a dialogue:
Former CIA Jerusalem bureau head Melissa Boyle Mahle remarked that, if a suitcase nuke goes off in American city, that would spell the end of freedom in the U.S. Chillingly, she described freedom as a fair weather accessory of our country – something unable to weather a severe storm.
And then there was Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift who had represented detainees in Gitmo. He called on Americans to show courage – to follow our convictions in favor of freedom even when we are scared.
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