"SECRECY"

November 26, 1998

David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages New York Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, author of "Secrecy."

DAVID GERGEN: Sen. Moynihan, thank you for joining us. You write in your new book that the American government, which once prided itself on its openness, is now infected with a culture of secrecy. Can you tell us about that? SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, Author, "Secrecy:" Well, yes. It's a century-long process. It began in World War I, when - with the Espionage Act - and things like that - never as a law about secrecy but much concern about it. And we picked up from the British this confidential secret - top secret stuff. Developed in the 30s as Nazi espionage developed also, and there was that. In the 40s, the Second World War, we had a lot of spying on all sides. The Soviets began to spy in this country, and in 1943, the army signals began to copy their traffic out of New York and Washington, which was coded, and they started trying to break it. And here's a nice story. They took over a girls' school called Arlington Hall about a mile from here. DAVID GERGEN: Right. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: And a bunch of women, a few men, a brilliant crypt analyst, Gardner Meredith, finally in December 1946 broke the first cable - they're one time pads - you can't break them but they got overworked or casual and used them several times. He did it. There were the names of all the atomic spies - I'm sorry - all the atomic physicists at Los Alamos. And standing over his shoulder and giving him cups of coffee and sharpened pencils was a corporal in the army, cipher clerk named Weisband, who was a KGB agent. So right away the Soviets learned that we had broken their code, and they changed it. We worked on this Venona Project, as it was called, for - right up until 1980, by 1950, had most of the material. We knew about Alger Hiss. We knew about the other agents. As George Kennan has said, the Soviet activity was not - not tremendous but it wasn't trivial. But the most important fact is no one ever told the President. DAVID GERGEN: About Alger Hiss. And the fact that we knew these things about Soviet spies in our midst. SEN.DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: Right. He thought Whitaker Chambers was a nut. No one ever told him Whitaker Chambers was telling the truth. DAVID GERGEN: If the United States Government had disclosed to its own president the secrets that it uncovered, how different would the McCarthy period have been? SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: It could have been hugely different. The cultural divide that took place, the attack on liberalism and the defense from too many liberals, not all, of the charge - most - who was making it - now what did McCarthy know about this? He didn't know anything, but that didn't mean there wasn't a Soviet conspiracy in the State Department. Harry Dexter White was a Soviet agent, Treasury Department. DAVID GERGEN: Now, you believe that same culture of secrecy that has continued on, certainly went through the end of the Cold War, also damaged some presidents. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: Secrecy is hugely inefficient. Now, there are secrets you have to have, but if you have so many in this wonderful bureaucratic way we put out a journal on the number of secrets we created last year, but the secret about the report is it doesn't include the real secrets, which are the special access programs, things like that. But the - in the Nixon administration they appointed a panel out of the Department of Defense on secrecy in science. It was headed by Frederick Sikes, then the president of Rockefeller University. Edward Teller, Jack Ruwino - first rate scientists - defense scientists - and they said, well, you know, ideally, there can be no secrets. But there are none. You're not a scientist. But five years absolute maximum did we realize we're realists about the world, because nothing stays secret more than five years. We are still reclassifying material from the Atomic Energy Agency era. DAVID GERGEN: This culture of secrecy then has continued with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the culture of secrecy just rose up. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: It grows, while the Defense Department declines. DAVID GERGEN: It was the size of the Defense Department. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: Yes. It will sustain itself, and it will keep from criticism the sort of give and take of argument and public life, things the government really needs to have debated. So, the collapse of the Soviet Union came as a total surprise. Stansfield Turner, head of the - Admiral Turner - who's head of the CIA under President Carter - wrote in foreign affairs, "We missed it completely." DAVID GERGEN: Because so much had been concealed within the government. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: Because we knew that the Soviet Union was gaining on us inside the government. We knew that the per capita GDP in East Germany was higher than West Germany. I once said to head of the CIA - CIA director - you know, any taxi driver in Berlin could have told you that wasn't so. He said, any taxi driver in Washington. But it was what our computer models told us. It was the crossover point, a model that began under Eisenhower and the Soviet growing faster than us, and at a certain point they would surpass us. And we were utterly unprepared, and I would put it to you this way - we still act as if the Soviet Union was our enemy and somehow is still there in the form of Russia, don't notice that the Russian people overthrew a totalitarian regime of the most extraordinary power, bloodless revolution, and whereas - and right away after World War II, we began to rebuild Germany, rebuild Italy, Japan, as well as France and Britain, we do nothing while Russia just begins to fall apart, and it - with the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and it - we can't be open about this. DAVID GERGEN: How do we move from a culture of secrecy to what you call a culture of openness? SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: First of all, recognize that you have a culture of secrecy. It's so pervasive you don't even notice it. Secondly, get a statute, a commission unanimously recommended a statute say by law this is a secret - sign your name - the person who makes it secret - put down the date when it ceases to be a secret. DAVID GERGEN: Sunset them. SEN. DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: Sunset them. DAVID GERGEN: Sen. Moynihan, thank you very much.