cover image Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Foreign Policy

Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Foreign Policy

Scott Horton.. Nation (Perseus, dist.), $26.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-56858-745-5

Horton, a Harper's magazine contributing editor, argues that the U.S. has abandoned its democratic roots in its post-9/11 obsession with shielding national security programs and decision making from Congress, the news media, and the public. He turns to the ancient Athenians for a primer on military decision making and finds much to admire in German sociologist Max Weber's theories on the dangers of secrecy in bureaucracies. In Horton's view, the U.S. has strayed far from these templates. High-level CIA, NSA, Justice Department, and other national security officials have amassed unrivalled powers to legitimize formerly illegal activities, such as the capture and torture of suspected terrorists, and to declare national security emergencies that merit more covert responses%E2%80%94and more secrecy, prompting Horton to disdain "contemporary Washington's... aversion to any form of accountability." Only a few whistleblowers, like the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have dared, at their peril, to confront this national security apparatus. Marrying a strong theoretical foundation to ample historical evidence, Horton concludes that the U.S. is in a "state of crisis": Americans are so focused on being protected from poorly understood external threats that they have ignored the dangers that these cadres pose to the democracy that they purport to hold dear. (Jan.)