Secrets: Should they be published?

Over at Unclaimed Territory, Hume's Ghost has an excellent post on the ethics and necessity for newspapers publishing things the government would rather they didn't. Along with quotes from the Founders which amply show that (as usual) they knew exactly what they were doing* when they established Freedom of the Press, he covers Robert Kaiser's Washington Post editorial which sparked his essay, including the very important point that "secrecy and security are not the same."

He quotes Kaiser's list of things that have been revealed that the White House intended to keep secret.

Thanks to resourceful reporters, we have learned a great deal about the war that the administration apparently never intended to reveal: that the CIA never could assure the White House that Saddam Hussein's Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction; that U.S. forces egregiously abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib; that the United States had a policy of rendering terrorism suspects to countries such as Egypt and Jordan where torture is commonplace; that the United States established secret prisons in Eastern Europe for terrorism suspects; that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping without warrants on the phone calls of countless Americans, as well as keeping track of whom Americans called from home and work.

Both of them tackle Gonzales and then Hume's Ghost goes off on some tangents of his own.

But the main thrust of the post is simple and (I think) undeniable: It is the press's job to watch the government, not abet it, because with this sort of reporting We the People have no chance to control the government and will, instead, be controlled by it. And that's not what our country was set up to be.

As always at Unclaimed Territory, the comments that follow offer some equally good information and discussion.

* To listen to many people, particularly on the godless Constitution issues, you'd think the Founders cranked the Constitution out in a couple of hours, with no input and less thought. It took time, and they were careful, and you can believe it - because you can find the sources - that people pointed it out to them. You may not agree with what they did, but they quite certainly knew what they were about.