Democracy in the dark

"From Dick Cheney's man-sized safe to NSA's massive intelligence gathering, secrecy has captured the American government's modus operandi better than the ideals of the Constitution. In this new book, Fritz Schwarz, who was chief counsel to the U.S. Church Committee on Intelligence- which uncovered CIA plots to assassinate world leaders, including Fidel Castro's exploding cigar- uses examples ranging from the dropping of the first Atomic bomb, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to Iran Contra and 9/11 to illuminate this central question: How much secrecy does good governance require? Schwarz argues that while some control of information is necessary, governments tend to fall prey to a culture of secrecy that is ultimately not just hazardous to democracy but antithetical to it." --