News Reports of ‘Secret Mission’
I quote one sentence from your editorial: “The Pentagon has a right--even a duty--to keep secrets that it believes are vital to performing its mission, but the press has the right to gather information of public interest and to publish it if it disagrees.”
A citizen reading this in the faraway years before nuclear bombs were built would have undoubtedly nodded his head in agreement. After all, danger from bombs back in those days was comparative kid stuff. But today, with nuclear bombs running rather loose in the world and further proliferation almost certain, do we not need and want more military secrets, secrets more safely kept, more spies on our side, more self-restraint by the press, less insistence on press freedom?
The editorial suggests to me that our minds are going to take some time to catch up to the new and far more dangerous world the scientists bequeathed us at Almagordo in 1945.
We have many people aware of the “military” dangers in the bomb, but few aware of its political and other effects, such as its built-in potential for toughening our attitudes toward the exposure of secrets.
Given today’s danger, not even Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death”) may have felt so sure.
R. E. CARNEY
Los Angeles
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
