The Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, also called the Moynihan Commission, after its chairman, U.S. Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (; March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and social scientist. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he represented New York (state), New York in the ...
, was a
bipartisan
Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system (especially those of the United States and some other western countries), in which opposing Political party, politica ...
statutory commission in the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. It was created under Title IX of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995 (P.L. 103-236 SEC. 900) to conduct "an investigation into all matters in any way related to any
legislation
Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred ...
,
executive order
In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of the ...
,
regulation
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...
, practice, or procedure relating to
classified information
Classified information is confidential material that a government deems to be sensitive information which must be protected from unauthorized disclosure that requires special handling and dissemination controls. Access is restricted by law or ...
or granting
security clearance
A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to classified information (state or organizational secrets) or to restricted areas, after completion of a thorough background check. The term "security clearance" is ...
s" and to submit a final report with recommendations. The Commission's investigation of government secrecy was the first authorized by statute since the
Wright Commission on Government Security issued its report in 1957.
The Commission issued its unanimous final report on March 3, 1997.
A major effect of the commission was the declassification of the
VENONA project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...
.
Key findings
The Commission's key findings were:
*Secrecy is a form of government regulation.
*Excessive secrecy has significant consequences for the national interest when policy makers are not fully informed, the government is not held accountable for its actions, and the public cannot engage in informed debate.
*Some secrecy is important to minimize inappropriate diffusion of details of weapon systems design and ongoing security operations as well as to allow public servants to secretly consider a variety of policy options without fear of criticism.
*The best way to ensure that secrecy is respected, and that the most important secrets remain secret, is for secrecy to be returned to its limited but necessary role. Secrets can be protected more effectively if secrecy is reduced overall.
*Apart from aspects of nuclear energy subject to the Atomic Energy Act, secrets in the federal government are whatever anyone with a stamp decides to stamp secret. This inevitably produces problems where even the President of the United States may make mistakes that might have been avoided with a more open system.
*A new statute is needed to set forth the principles for what may be declared secret.
Senator Moynihan reported that approximately 400,000 new secrets are created annually at the highest level, Top Secret. That level is defined by law as applying to any secret that, were it to become public, would cause "exceptionally grave damage to the national security." In 1994, it was estimated that the
United States government
The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States.
The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...
had over 1.5 billion pages of classified material that were at least 25 years old.
In 1995 President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...
's Executive Order 12958 updated the national security classification and
declassification
Declassification is the process of ceasing a protective classification, often under the principle of freedom of information. Procedures for declassification vary by country. Papers may be withheld without being classified as secret, and event ...
system. This Executive Order established a system to automatically declassify information more than 25 years old, unless the government took discrete steps to continue the classification of a particular document or group of documents.
Members
*
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (; March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and social scientist. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he represented New York (state), New York in the ...
, Chairman.
*
Larry Combest
Larry Ed Combest (born March 20, 1945) is a retired American Republican politician who represented Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 to 2003.
Early life
Combest was born in Memphis, Texas, a small town in West Texas and the ...
, Vice Chairman; Congressman from the
19th district of Texas.
*
John M. Deutch
John Mark Deutch (born July 27, 1938) is an American civil servant and physical chemist. He was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995 and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from May 10, 1995, until December 15, 1996 ...
, former
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
Director.
*
Martin C. Faga. Mr, former Director of the
National Reconnaissance Office
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. f ...
and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space.
*
Alison B. Fortier, Director of
Missile Defense
Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception, and also the destruction of attacking missiles. Conceived as a defense against nuclear weapon, nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic mi ...
Programs in the Washington Operations Office of the Space and Strategic Missiles Sector of Lockheed Martin Corporation.
*
Richard K. Fox, career foreign service officer in the
U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...
.
*
Lee H. Hamilton
Lee Herbert Hamilton (born April 20, 1931) is an American politician and lawyer from Indiana. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and a former member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of th ...
, Ranking Democratic Member of the
House International Relations Committee
The United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, also known as the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a standing committee of the U.S. House of Representatives with jurisdiction over bills and investigations concerning the foreign affairs ...
.
*
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was an American politician. A leader in the Conservatism in the United States, conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the ...
, former Chairman of the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the U.S. Senate charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. It is generally responsible for authorizing and overseeing foreign a ...
.
*Ellen Hume, Executive Director of PBS's
Democracy Project
''The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement'' is anthropologist David Graeber's 2013 book-length, inside account of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Graeber evaluates the beginning of the movement, the source of its efficacy, and ...
.
*
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affair ...
. Harvard Professor, Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies; author of the ''
Clash of Civilizations
The "Clash of Civilizations" is a thesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be ...
''.
*
John Podesta
John David Podesta Jr. (born January 8, 1949) is an American political consultant who served as Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy from 2024 to 2025, having previously served as the Senior Advisor to the President ...
, Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff.
*
Maurice Sonnenberg Maurice Sonnenberg has served as an outside advisor to five Presidential Administrations in the areas of international trade, finance, international relations, intelligence, and foreign election monitoring.
Biography
Education
Sonnenberg is a gr ...
, member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (
PFIAB
The President's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) is an advisory body to the Executive Office of the President of the United States. According to its self-description, it "provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy o ...
).
Cold War secrecy
The Commission findings regarding government secrecy in the early
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
period have led to a reevaluation of many public perceptions regarding the period. By 1950, the United States government was in possession of information which the American public did not know: proof of a serious attack on American security by the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, with considerable assistance from an enemy within. Soviet authorities knew the U.S. government knew. Only the American people were denied this information.
One revelation of the
Venona project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...
intercepts is that many Americans who spied for the Soviet Union were never prosecuted. To do so the government would have to reveal what it knew. On 29 May 1946,
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
(FBI) Director
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American attorney and law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau o ...
sent a high administration official a memorandum reporting "an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington." Undersecretary of State
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson ( ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st United States Secretary of State, U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to ...
was (falsely) at the top of the list. Truman distrusted Hoover and suspected Hoover of playing political games. Acheson's inclusion at the top of the list automatically discredited other accusations which were on target,
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official who was accused of espionage in 1948 for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjur ...
and
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (November 27, 1898 – October 7, 1964) was an economist with the United States War Production Board (WPB) during World War II, was the head of a large ring of Communist Espionage, spies in the U.S. government. It is f ...
.
In late August or early September 1947, the
Army Security Agency
The United States Army Security Agency (ASA) was the United States Army, United States Army's signals intelligence branch from 1945 to 1977. The Latin motto of the Army Security Agency was ''Semper Vigilis'' (Vigilant Always), which echoes the ...
informed the FBI it had begun to break into Soviet espionage messages. Truman had never been told of the existence of the Venona project, and always insisted
Republicans
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
had trumped up the loyalty issue for political gain.
The prosecutors in the internal-security cases of the 1940s did not know they had not been given all, or even the best government evidence, against the
Rosenbergs, and others. The Venona project materials would have been
conclusive in establishing the cast of characters in the Soviet spy networks. Government secrecy allowed critics of the Rosenberg and Hiss cases to construct elaborate theories about frame-ups and cover-ups. For years the Rosenbergs' defenders demanded that the government reveal its secrets about the case. When Secrecy Commission forced the disclosure of documents, the secrets revealed the government's case was even stronger. "Over the years," said
Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh ( ; born 1937) is an American Social conservatism in the United States, social conservative writer, professor, historian, and former Marxist. As he described in his memoirs, Radosh was, like his Ashkenazi Jewish parents, a member of ...
, "the Rosenbergs' defenders have loudly demanded the release of government documents on the case, only to deny the documents' significance once they are made public." As archives of the Cold War are opened, the original case made against Soviet espionage in the United States has received ever more conclusive corroboration.
Loyalty
There is much information within a bureaucracy which could be used to injure the Government, or the
national interest
The national interest is a sovereign state's goals and ambitions – be they economic, military, cultural, or otherwise – taken to be the aim of its government.
Etymology
The Italian phrase ''ragione degli stati'' was first used by Giovanni de ...
if revealed by disloyal persons to hostile nations or, for that matter, to hostile internal elements. It appears that the three-tiered gradation of today, Confidential/ Secret/Top Secret was adopted by the U.S. military from British forces in France in 1917, and was institutionalized with the
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code ( ...
. The U.S. Civil Service Commission, established by the
Pendleton Act
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal gover ...
in 1883, was debarring persons relating to "loyalty" as late as 1921.
The Commission Report quotes
Max Weber
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...
,
Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret ... Bureaucracy naturally welcomes a poorly informed and hence a powerless parliament—at least insofar as ignorance somehow agrees with the bureaucracy's interests.
In March 1947 President Truman issued
Executive Order 9835
President Harry S. Truman signed United States Executive Order 9835, sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence ...
, establishing the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, providing uniform investigation standards and procedures, and authorizing the creation of Loyalty Review Boards across the Government. The Truman Order—based on the findings of an interdepartmental committee established in 1946—was superseded by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
's issuance of
Executive Order 10450
President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 on April 27, 1953. Effective May 27, 1953, it revoked President Truman's Executive Order 9835 of 1947 and dismantled its Loyalty Review Board program. Instead, it charged the heads ...
in April 1953, which provided that "
e appointment of each civilian officer or employee in any department or agency of the Government shall be made subject to an investigation," and made each agency head responsible for ensuring that "the employment and retention in employment of any civilian officer or employee within the department or agency is clearly consistent with the interests of the
national security
National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...
." While abolishing the Truman Order program, including the Loyalty Review Boards within the Civil Service Commission, the new Order also made clear that "the interests of national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States."
In this manner, a broader "security" program was established across the Government. The political pressure had increased with the passage of legislation in 1950 "
protect the national security of the United States by permitting the summary suspension of employment of civilian officers and employees of various departments and agencies. ... " In addition, beginning in March 1948, the Attorney General's List was published on a regular basis—with members of organizations included on such a list to be denied employment in the federal government or defense industries as well as the right to a U.S. passport. During the
1952 presidential campaign,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
promised to root out Communists and other security risks from government and defense industry employment— suggesting that their presence had been tolerated too easily by the Truman administration despite the existence of rules to address "loyalty" concerns. In his first State of the Union address Eisenhower promised a new system "for keeping out the disloyal and the dangerous." Executive Order 10450 soon followed. Senator
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican Party (United States), Republican United States Senate, U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death at age ...
praised the new Executive Order. The ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' reported, "The new program will require a new investigation of many thousands of employees previously investigated, as well as many more thousands who have had no security check."
In November 1953, Attorney General
Herbert Brownell would allege in a speech that Truman had nominated a Soviet spy—senior Treasury Department official
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American government official in the United States Department of the Treasury. Working closely with the secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financia ...
—to serve as the U.S. Executive Director of the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...
, despite what Brownell said was the President's awareness of White's involvement in Soviet espionage. And on December 3, 1953, President Eisenhower directed that a "blank wall be placed between Dr.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...
and secret data"—marking the beginning of the process that led to the
Atomic Energy Commission
Many countries have or have had an Atomic Energy Commission. These include:
* National Atomic Energy Commission, Argentina (1950–present)
* Australian Atomic Energy Commission (1952–1987)
* Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (1973–present)
* ...
's suspension of Oppenheimer's security clearance later in December and its 4-to-1 decision on June 28, 1954, against restoring the clearance.
Notes
Testimony of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate Hearing on Government Secrecy, 7 May 1997.
(1997).
*
ttp://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appa6.html Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, ''The Experience of The Bomb''(1997).
Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Chairmans Forward(1997).
* Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ''Secrecy: The American Experience'', (New Haven:
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...
1998), pg. 54.
* Ibid, pg. 62.
* Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pgs. 471–72.
* Moynihan, ''Secrecy'', pg. 52.
* Ibid, pg. 62.
Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, ''Loyalty''(1997).
* Max Weber, ''Essays in Sociology'', trans. and ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1946), 233–34; ''Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft'' (''Economy and Society''), 1922.
Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, ''A Culture of Secrecy''(1997).
References
External links
*
ttp://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appb.html Commission's Authorizing Statute P.L. 103-236; April 30, 1994.
Moynihan Commission Report
{{Authority control
Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy The Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, also called the Moynihan Commission, after its chairman, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was a bipartisan statutory commission in the United States. It was created under Title IX o ...
United States government secrecy
United States national commissions
1994 establishments in the United States
1997 disestablishments in the United States