Scott Horton - Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and Americas Stealth Warfare

Praise for Lords of Secrecy

Scott Hortons Lords of Secrecy is a brilliantly devastating expos of the shadow government that runs US national security policy. No matter who wins the White House, this secretive clique retains control over Americas darkest secrets and will stop at nothing to keep them from the public. Its members names are largely unknown and its actions unchecked. In an era of an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, and the very existence of a free press, Hortons book provides an essential playbook for battling this undemocratic beast.

Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater and Dirty Wars

A government accountable to its citizens is one of the foundations of a democratic society. Horton demonstrates how secrecy corrodes democratic institutions, stifles the freedom of information, and protects the powerful from accountability. Lords of Secrecy makes the case that in order to strengthen the rule of law and keep government power in check, we must demand critical debate, civic participation, and above all, transparency.

George Soros

This book will resonate widely, a searing indictment of the national security state that undermines the very values it purports to protect. Scott Horton is a consistent, powerful voice against the abuses of power, an apostle for reason and liberty under the law.

Philippe Sands, professor of law, University of London, and author of Torture Team: Rumsfelds Memo and the Betrayal of American Values

Lords of Secrecy is one of the most important contributions to the vital debate about democracy in the post-Cold War era yet published. Scott Horton diligently peels away layers of hypocritical rhetoric designed to obscure what has been happening. This is a call to arms: American democracy is under threat and the power of increasingly unaccountable agencies must be brought under control.

Misha Glenny, author of McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld

In his theoretically sophisticated and eye-opening book, Scott Horton brilliantly traces the many documented follies of the American national security establishment and examines the unjustifiable use of government secrecy. The lethal challenge to the survival of the countrys democratic principles has never been more chillingly diagnosed.

Stephen Holmes, professor of law, New York University, and author of The Matadors Cape: Americas Reckless Response to Terror

From drone wars to Middle East fiascos to the war on whistleblowers, Scott Horton brilliantly blends original reporting with a reasoned defense of democratic ideals going back to ancient Athens. Lucid, learned, judicious, and hard-hitting, Lords of Secrecy is an indispensable book for any reader interested in public affairs.

David Luban, professor of law and philosophy, Georgetown University

Scott Horton has revealed the real secret at the heart of all the exposs about the NSA, torture, the Iraq War, the CIA spying on the Congressand this is the secretits the secrecy. And by understanding the secret of secrecy, Horton discloses just how the mysticism surrounding it has created a momentum that threatens what Hannah Arendt once called a crisis of the republic.

Sidney Blumenthal

Copyright 2015 by Scott Horton.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Horton, Scott.

Lords of secrecy : the national security elite and Americas stealth warfare / Scott Horton.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-56858-488-1 (electronic) 1. Official

secretsUnited States. 2. Government informationUnited States. 3. National securityUnited

States. 4. United StatesMilitary policy. 5. United StatesForeign relations21st century. 6.

United StatesArmed ForcesWeapons systems. I. Title.

JK468.S4H67 2015

327.1273dc23

2014028268

T his book is dedicated to the memory of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, a man who passed most of his life confined in a world of secrecy. While scrupulously observing his oath to keep momentous secrets, Sakharov nevertheless deeply appreciated the destructive force of secrecy in human society. He dedicated his life to a dialogue that informed the public about the secrets that responsible citizens need to know. His life and example provide a solution for Americas current secrecy crisis.

I believe that very few secrets are really important. As I see it, the less there are of them, the better it is for world stability.

ANDREI D. SAKHAROV, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH JEAN-PIERRE BAROU, LE FIGARO, JANUARY 1989

O N MARCH 11, 2014, California sen. Dianne Feinstein stepped to the well of the Senate to deliver a speech exposing in stark terms a struggle between congressional investigators and their oversight subject: the Central Intelligence Agency. Feinstein was an unlikely critic of the practices of the intelligence community. The wife of investment banker Richard C. Blum, who managed enormous capital investments in corporations serving the American defense and intelligence communities, Feinstein had distinguished herself among Senate Democrats as a staunch CIA defender. In her long service on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which she had chaired since 2009, Feinstein established close personal ties with key senior agency figureschampioning the candidacy of former deputy director Stephen Kappes to head the agency after Barack Obama was elected.

Patiently and meticulously, Feinstein unfolded the string of events that led her committee to launch the most exhaustive congressional probe of a single CIA program in the nations history. On December 6, 2007, a New York Times article revealed the troubling fact that the CIA had destroyed video tapes of some of the CIAs first interrogations using so-called enhanced techniques, she stated.

CIA director Michael Hayden had assured congressional overseers that they had no reason to be concerned: routine written field reports, what Hayden called CIA operational cables, had been retained. These documents, Hayden said, described the detention conditions of prisoners held by the CIA before it decided to shut down the program as well as the day-to-day CIA interrogations. Hayden offered the senators access to these cables to prove to them that the destruction of the tapes was not a serious issue. Moreover, he reminded them that the CIA program was a historical relic: in the fall of 2006 the Bush administration ended the CIAs role as a jailer and sharply curtailed its program of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs)specifically eliminating techniques that most of the international community, including the United States in the period before and after the Bush presidency, had viewed as torture, such as waterboarding.