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Many historians, philosophers and journalists agree that there have to be certain checks on the unlimited right of the public to knowledge about its government. Clinton Rossiter, a leading historian of the presidency, counted executive secrecy in diplomacy an essential prerogative of a President. Columnist Walter Lippmann, in his classic The Public Philosophy, observed that only within an ideal society, where laws of rational order prevail, is there "sure and sufficient ground for the freedom to speak and to publish." Even James Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post and an articulate spokesman for press freedom, takes no unlimited view of "the right to know." While decrying the proliferation of governmental secrecy, he writes: "We can give up a little freedom without surrendering all of it. We can have a little secrecy without having a Government that is altogether secret. Each added measure of secrecy, however, measurably diminishes our freedom."
Secret Details. The question arises whether or not too many measures of secrecy have been imposed upon the conduct of public affairs in America. A case in point is the extraordinary number of military and diplomatic agreements the U.S. has made in recent years with an assortment of allies and satellites. Many of these treaties in disguise involve a vast expenditure of American money, and could commit the U.S. to aiding other countries if war broke out. More often than not, details of the commitments were kept secret from the American public until disclosed by inquisitive newsmen or equally inquisitive congressional investigators.
Consider Laos. It is no secret any longer that the U.S. is today deeply involved in an undeclared war there, allied with the supposedly neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. Yet only after Senator Stuart Symington's Foreign Relations Subcommittee looked into the matter, against the wishes of the State Department, did the American public learn in detail how U.S. aircraft based in Thailand were bombing northern Laos, the CIA was guiding the operations of Meo tribesmen, and the U.S. was providing millions in military assistance to Souvanna Phouma—all clear violations of the 1962 Geneva accords on Laotian neutrality.
Among the reasons for secrecy about Laos advanced by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Sullivan was that the U.S. wanted to avoid forcing the Russians into taking "official" cognizance of activities about which they knew only unofficially. Plaintively, Senator Symington suggested that the U.S. public had a valid interest in knowing what was going on in Laos, since "we could run into the same kind of escalation as we did in Viet Nam."