Lords of Secrecy Quotes

“The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a special unit of the North Carolina-based Special Operations Command (SOCOM), existed before Rumsfeld, but its mission, profile, and budget dramatically expanded during his tenure as secretary of defense in the Bush administration. It effectively became Rumsfeld's clandestine service. JSOC operatives did not necessarily wear uniforms, dispensed with many aspects of normal military protocol, and adopted secrecy as their byword. Consequently, the boundary lines laid down in 1947 were breached on both sides: the CIA got its own army and air force, and the Pentagon got its own CIA.”
― Scott Horton, Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare

“The bomb was 'born secret,' as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said. The atomic bomb marked a powerful turning point in America's stewardship of national security affairs. After its arrival, Garry Willis argues, 'the power of secrecy that enveloped the Bomb became a model for the planning or execution of Anything Important, as guarded by Important People.' But the first stop was a radical restructuring of the government itself, to account for the development and expansion of a nuclear arsenal requiring special means, staffs, oversight, and a stringent and novel regime of peacetime secrecy. The national security state was born.”
― Scott Horton, Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare