Secrecy and the Right to Know

Abstract

The public's to know has always been a basic tenet of American political theory. A healthy democracy requires public participation in the formulation and administration of government policy. Full information about policy proposals and debate over alternatives ensure popular consent. Public examination of ongoing programs ensures the government's accountability. Of course, in a country of any size, such tasks can best be performed in a representative forum. Thus Congress, acting in behalf of the public, should first direct, and then oversee executive administration. More recently, however, a competing set of values seems to have received higher priority. Executive branch officials-especially in the agencies-have consistently sought to insulate their activities from public scrutiny. With the growing attention to, and presidential conduct of, diplomacy and defense policy, national security has become a broad cloak under which public policy is actually made in private. Full disclosure, it has been suggested, would jeopardize diplomatic, military, and covert intelligence gathering activities. Accordingly, secrecy has been maintained; efforts to illuminate the workings of the executive-whether undertaken by Congress, the press, or the public-have been resisted. National is, of course, a legitimate concern. It does not, however, provide the blanket justification for secrecy that is claimed by some members of the executive branch. Rather, it is but one of several considerations to be weighed against the traditional right of Congress and the public to be adequately informed. The purpose of this paper is to begin weighing these considerations systematically. We begin with several premises: that reduced secrecy is vital to the healthy public debate of policy; that Congress has, on the whole, an interest in making information public, just as the executive branch has an interest in keeping it secret; that both houses of Congress and their commit-