A Book Discussion on "Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law"

May 2010

Past Event

A Book Discussion on "Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law"

Past Event

Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters

May 25, 2010

May 2010

Past Event

1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

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Speakers:

General Michael Hayden,

Former director of the CIA and NSA and principal at the Chertoff Group

Kenneth R. Weinstein,

Hudson Institute CEO

Gabriel Schoenfeld,

Hudson Senior Fellow and author

Benjamin Wittes,

Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, Brookings Institution

Steve Aftergood,

Director, Project on Government Secrecy, Federation of American Scientists

America's military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the specter of increasing terrorism both at home and abroad, raise perplexing questions about government secrecy: Just how much information should the U.S. government disclose about its military, intelligence, and counterterrorism activities, and how much information should news organizations reveal to the public?

"Leaking"—the unauthorized disclosure to the press of secret information—is a well-established part of the U.S. government's normal functioning. In his new book, Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law (Norton, 2010), Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Gabriel Schoenfeld examines history and legal precedent to argue that leaks of highly classified national-security secrets have reached hitherto unthinkable extremes, with dangerous potential for post-9/11 America. He goes on to make the case that in some circumstances legal prosecution of those who publish national defense secrets is warranted.

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