At heart, national security secrecy presents a conflict of core values: self-government and self-defense. If we do not know what our government is doing, we cannot hold it accountable. If we do know, our enemies know, too. That can be dangerous. That is our predicament. Wartime heightens the case for secrecy because the value of security is at its peak. But secrecy is never more damaging to self-government than in wartime, because making war is the very paradigm of a political choice.
