‘Nobody’s in Charge’

Why is the U.S. government keeping so many secrets from the American people? Matthew Connelly on how official classification has gone out of control. Brought to you by [Congo Clothing Company]( Recently at The Signal: How sustainable is Russia’s wartime economy? Dmitri Alperovitch on [appearance and reality in the Kremlin’s new growth model](. … Today: Why is the U.S. government keeping so many secrets from the American people? Matthew Connelly on how official classification has gone out of control. … Also: Michael Bluhm on the Ukrainian army’s unexpected drive into Russian territory. Subscribe to The Signal? Share with a friend. … Sent to you? Sign up [here](. Need to Know Haneen Krimly Just days after the September 11 attack on the United States, British authorities seized evidence from the home of a Saudi national, Omar al-Bayoumi. He had ties to two al-Qaeda hijackers—and, among other things, set them up with a place to live in San Diego. In recent months, some of this evidence has become public for the first time. It indicates that al-Bayoumi had calculations to help a plane hit a target on the horizon. An FBI report—declassified by the Biden administration in 2021—found that al-Bayoumi was an agent of Saudi intelligence. And this June, the American TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a video that al-Bayoumi filmed outside the U.S. Capitol. It appears to show him scoping out the area for a potential attack. After the raid on al-Bayoumi’s home, the Brits handed over their material to the FBI—but the FBI never shared it with the 9/11 Commission, which concluded there was no proof of Saudi complicity. Tom Kean, the commission’s chairman, commented on the recent revelations, “The FBI said it wasn’t withholding anything, and we believed them.” Why would this happen? Matthew Connelly is a professor of international and global history at Columbia University and the author of [The Declassification Engine](. As Connelly sees it, American intelligence has a classification problem. The U.S. government is keeping so many secrets that, at this point, not even the president knows the extent of it. In fact, he says, this secrecy regime is so vast that no one can keep track of it. Part of the problem is that American government officials have every incentive to classify cavalierly rather than carefully. Electronic communications have meanwhile only complicated the problem—as more and more classified material piles up every day. Now, even rudimentary oversight is impossible. While conspiratorial fantasies have long been common in the United States, this can’t be helping. And if the American people are going to keep their government accountable, Connelly says, they’ll have to figure out how to reestablish their ability to know what their government does … [Read on]( The Signal is a new current-affairs brand for understanding democratic life, the trend lines shaping it, and the challenges confronting it. Learn [more](. And [join](—to be a valued member, support our growth, and have full access. Advertisement From Matthew Connelly at The Signal: - “Back in the 1970s, the Pentagon Papers revealed that the White House lied about the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal revealed that Richard Nixon’s administration had been involved in breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters. State secrets about illegal conduct leaked to the American public. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff realized that records of their meetings might be released one day. So, what did they do? They stopped taking notes, and they destroyed all their records. And that’s still the case. Officially, they maintain that they don’t produce records of any of their meetings. The most senior people in the Pentagon are running this $800 billion department as if it were some kind of numbers racket, where they don’t take notes in case people find out what they’re doing.” - “Information is increasing exponentially in general, and that’s no less true of classified information. Even 10 years ago, the State Department produced something like a billion emails a year. How could you possibly review and release all that? Look at how long it took to review former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. There were about 30,000 of them. I think some 50 or 60 people worked on reviewing those 30,000 emails; it still took them more than eight months; and even then, they couldn’t go through all of them. So, imagine what it would take to review a billion—and that’s just from one year.” - “All the incentives are to classify—and to classify at the highest level. You could get in trouble if information gets out that shouldn’t, but you almost never get in trouble for classifying too much. It’s not supposed to work that way. If you read these executive orders setting out the secrecy rules, you’d think people would be disciplined for over-classification. But I’ve never come across a single example. I remember talking with somebody in the National Archives, and I asked them, Can you give me one example of anybody ever being disciplined for over-classification? They avoided the question.” [Read on]( The world is complex, ambiguous, and inherently uncertain … That’s why we look at it the way a detective would: Everything The Signal does starts with good questions, and every answer leads us to more of them. Become a [member]( to unlock this full conversation and explore the archive. Advertisement Wary of fast fashion? Shop Congo Clothing Company and make a difference—in style. [Learn more]( NOTES Ukraine Attacks Efe Yağız Soysal For nearly a year, the war in Europe had settled into a stalemate, with Russian and Ukrainian forces both dug into fortified positions, unable to gain more than a few kilometers of territory. Until last week. On August 6, Ukraine launched a sudden cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, seizing some 28 villages—and catching the Kremlin’s armed forces completely by surprise. It marked the [first time since World War II]( that a foreign military had invaded Russia. The operation seems also to have caught the United States by surprise—the U.S. being the Ukrainian military’s biggest funder and supplier. Kyiv didn’t tell Washington that it planned to go into Russia; and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been notably quiet about it—saying only that Russia had used the region to launch strikes against Ukraine and that Kyiv was drawing up a humanitarian plan for the area’s residents. So far, neither Zelensky, his military, nor the country’s closest allies in America have explained what Ukraine intended to accomplish by taking control of all these villages in Kursk. So why’d they do it? Zelensky has been clear that Kyiv doesn’t expect to hold the territory; the region has never been part of Ukraine. But the operation has clearly invigorated the Ukrainians: Reporting and social media show lots of illustrations of boosted morale among their soldiers and civilians—as well as somber questions and recriminations among Russians about how this could happen. For his part, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says he figures Ukraine wants to force the Kremlin to redeploy troops to Kursk so they won’t be available to fight in Ukraine—and possibly to improve Kyiv’s negotiating position in any potential peace talks. But Ukraine’s strategy is unclear—and the scale of the Russian response, uncertain. Ukraine has meanwhile faced [critical shortages of manpower](—and now, it has some of its most effective units exposed in Russian territory. —Michael Bluhm [Explore Notes]( Want more? Join The Signal to unlock full conversations with hundreds of contributors, explore the archive, and support our independent current-affairs coverage. [Become a member]( Coming soon: Moisés Naím on Venezuela’s stolen presidential election … This email address is unmonitored. Please send questions or comments [here](mailto:concierge@thesgnl.com). Find us on [Linkedin]( and [X](. To advertise with The Signal, inquire [here](mailto:advertise@thesgnl.com). 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