To start with I want to make clear that The Declassification Engine is a fantastically well written and engaging book. However, it is a book designed to make the reader concerned, to draw their attention to an issue in the American governmental system that most people might not be aware of, despite this issue’s grave importance to our understanding of the past, present, and future.
The Declassification Engine demonstrates the growth of government secrecy beginning in WWII, and the growing refusal of Presidents, advisers, security agencies, and the military to declassify records long after any protest of “protecting national security” can be justified. So why hide or destroy records that are inconsequential to national security? As Connelly makes very clear throughout the book, too often government and military officials use the cloak of secrecy to hide crimes committed, cover up incompetence or miscalculations, or to mask the needless waste of taxpayer money on inefficiency and harebrained boondoggles.
On top of all of this, the book also points out two other crucial issues created by this cult of over-classification. 1. The over-classification of information is damaging to both democratic accountability, and genuine national security. When presidents use secrecy to try to control the narrative of politics, or the CIA uses it to hide all the illegal things the agency has done throughout its history, it becomes so much easier for actual sensitive secrets to be leaked in this confusing quagmire. And 2. The deluge of needlessly classified government records, especially in the digital age, is making it literally impossible for the undermanned and underfunded National Archives to sort through it all. If we don’t put more emphasis as a nation on declassification and accountability, then we are at risk of huge numbers of documents being “lost” or just deleted because no one can sort through them all. The potential loss of our history and the possibility that corrupt or incompetent officials might be able to escape the scrutiny of future histories should be a worrying prospect for us all.
The one big ray of hope in The Declassification Engine is that many of the tools that the government uses to classify and surveil us can be used to help uncover what the government doesn’t want us to know, why they don’t want us to know it, and who in the government keeps the most secrets. Connelly describes in this book how he and different groups of data scientists can use algorithms and machine-learning to look for patterns in government documents. With these tools one might be able to find out what topics in a given time period receive the most classification, or whose name does or doesn’t appear often in top secret documents. This kind of examination, if properly developed and used correctly, could unlock a whole new avenue of approach to how historians research American political history.
I absolutely loved reading this book. A couple of years ago I started using a notebook to mark down pages numbers of books I read so I can quickly return passages that I thought were exceptionally well written and thought provoking, or if the author has an interesting primary source quote. Since I started doing this I’ve read dozens of books, and it’s become an informal but demonstrative way to see how much I liked a book or how eye opening it was, the more page numbers I write down, the more I enjoyed it. And looking at how many page numbers I noted when reading The Declassification Engine, I really liked the book. On average I made a note for one out of every ten pages, far more than most of the other books I’ve read since I started doing this. What I love about books of this type is that not only are they well researched and informative, they also broaden your horizons and provide fresh perspectives for those reading them. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything said in the book, it’s reasonable and thoughtful enough to appreciate its convictions.
For example, in one chapter of the book Connelly discusses programs the CIA conducted during the Cold War like MK Ultra that investigated whether mind control through new drugs was possible. MK Ultra was a hair-brained scheme from the start, demonstrating how secrecy often fosters incompetence rather than creativity and progress. But MK Ultra has become a monolith for conspiracy theorists for two important reasons, 1. The CIA was willing to conduct experiments on American citizens without their consent, proof that the government is willing to violate our fundamental rights if they feel as if it will serve their interests. And 2. Much of the documentation about MK Ultra was deliberately destroyed to cover up what was done.
Connelly speculated that programs like MK Ultra when they were revealed to the public have fostered a mistrust in the government and science in general that can help explain why there was so much hostility to science about climate change or to vaccines during the COIVD-19 pandemic. I had never considered this perspective before. But after reading this idea I believe it is very plausible and to an extent helped alleviate some of my own bafflement to the rampant and vicious anti-scientific views held by so many Americans.
This fear of the government’s intentions is especially understandable from Black Americans and other minorities. Reading this book reminded me of incidents in American history like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where Black Americans with syphilis were treated like lab rats to measure the effects of untreated syphilis. How much harder is it for a black man to trust the CDC now when they know that their lives have been treated like disposable petri dishes in the past, and systemic racism is still alive and well in the US today? This is the kind of long-term harm that government secrecy can do, especially when it is used to shield the guilty from consequences.
Conclusion:
I believe that The Declassification Engine is an important book that needs to be read by as many Americans as possible. America desperately needs to rethink its policy of official secrecy. Our current system is bloated and unwieldy, making it next to impossible to have democratic accountability while also failing to safeguard legitimate secrets. The Declassification Engine is part wake up call, and part warning. This book makes readers aware of the flawed regime of secrecy we have been living in since the Second World War. And it’s a warning of the history that could be lost if we don’t act soon to change what the government keeps secret and why.
I would describe The Declassification Engine as a book that takes an honest look at American history, as opposed to the whitewashed history every student learns in school (government secrecy plays its part in that whitewashing). If you’re interested in other books that take an honest look into America’s recent past I would recommend two other brilliant books to pair with Connelly’s. The first is Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, by Spencer Ackerman. The second book is Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonothan Katz. I’ll provide links to all three of these books below.
Links to Books:
The Declassification Engine:
Reign of Terror:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/reign-of-terror-spencer-ackerman/1138261754?ean=9781984879790
Gangsters of Capitalism: