“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.” ~ John F. Kennedy
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Amy Benjamin’s landmark analysis “The Many Faces of Secrecy” was published in the William & Mary Policy Review in October 2017. It addresses the “systemic secrecy crisis” in the United States. Benjamin is a lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology and is a former attorney at the US Department of Justice.
Her published abstract describes her analysis as follows:
“Political secrecy in the United States has never been more studied – and less understood – than it is today. This irony is due in large part to the slippery nature of the phenomenon: Secrecy presents in different guises depending on the area of governmental activity under consideration. In the classified world of the U.S. national security state, secrecy results from affirmative governmental acts designed to enforce a sharp distinction between official and public knowledge. In the outsourced and technocratic worlds of governmental contracting and economic management, secrecy results from quiet acts of exemption of whole areas of decision-making from the normal processes of public scrutiny. Scholars have underestimated the magnitude of the political secrecy that besets American society, and misconceived prescriptions meant to manage it, because they have failed to recognize that they are dealing with the same challenge in different form across multiple disciplines.
This Article attempts to effect, for the very first time, the kind of comparing-of-notes that is needed for a proper assessment of the scope of political secrecy. It introduces a simple yet indispensable typology – direct versus indirect secrecy – that enables us to recognize the many different faces of secrecy. Once we do so we are in a position to realize that we are confronting a systemic secrecy crisis. For various reasons and under cover of conflicting rationales, large swaths of policy-making have been placed beyond the review-and-reaction authority of the American people, to the detriment of even the most humble conceptions of transparency and democracy.”
~Benjamin, Amy, The Many Faces of Secrecy (September 18, 2017). William & Mary Policy Review, Vol. 8.2 (2017) . Available at SSRN.
While I was in Auckland, I had the opportunity to interview Amy for the Solari Report. We discussed her concepts of direct and indirect secrecy and explored in detail how indirect secrecy is engineered so as to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the general population to understand what is happening around us — in the government, in the economy and the financial markets.
Indirect secrecy includes (i) monetary and fiscal policy (making sure you do not have accessible central bank and government financial disclosure so you can understand “how the money works”), (ii) outsourcing government operations and intelligence to private corporations and (iii) engineering secret agreements and transactions through international institutions.
It is a challenge to understand how so much is kept secret. Once you understand the mechanics and infrastructure, however, that engineers this growing divide between “official reality” and reality, the world we are living in today starts to make a lot more sense.
We explore how to return transparency to our governments and public discourse.
We will publish this fascinating discussion for you this coming Thursday.
In next week’s Let’s Go to the Movies I will comment on Bill Arkin’s excellent database development for the series he co-authored Top Secret America described here in his 2011 interview on Democracy Now.
Unfortunately, this searchable data has recently been taken off line.
It is the last week of the month so there is no Money & Markets. I will be flying from New Zealand to San Francisco. If you are in the Bay Area I hope to see you for our tea on the afternoon of June 2. Subscribers can sign up here.
Related Reading:
Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen
Thanks Andrew for the highlights have listened to it twice. Love it, and will use your highlights. Also thanks for the letter.
Hopefully reps would hold tight reign on their oversight of money and processes if only out of fear of facing their constituents on a daily basis. Greater accountability, more transparency and less special interest access….
🙂
A few years ago, I came across the concept of Gov at Home touted by investor Jim Rogers. Very simply, the idea is to take advantage of technology to give Congress a kind of telecommute option for significant portions of time in session. In a nutshell, Gov at Home calls for House Representative officials primarily to live and work from their home districts and to conduct Washington business largely through digital means. In other words, representatives shop at local grocery stores, eat at local restaurants, send their kids to local schools– and cast their votes from a local high school auditorium in front of all their constituents.
All efforts from me and others I know of to promote this idea hasn’t picked up any traction. I’m hopeful Catherine and Solari subscribers will weigh in to revitalize it…. or to shoot it down if it’s something unworkable.
Here’s a link to a Jim Rogers video discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3XYyoE4tL8
It is a good idea. You just have to ensure that the Congressman still control their vote and the flow of appropriations and rules, not their staff. That could make it worse, since so much is rigged at the detail level outside what is accessible to busy people.
So the devil is in the detail on how you design the specifics.
I will post. Thanks!
a 2 term limit would be ideal as well
Dear Catherine
Another wonderful interview full of lighting bolts leaving me with so much to think about.
20:00 – Insight into the Federal Reserve Bank structure
27:20 – Reserve currency as a quid pro quo
38:00 – Trump doesn’t talk about the threat of robotics. He induces companies to come back to the US and then sits back as the companies roboticise their factories and put their workers out of work. We have to have a discussion about a roboticised labour force and what that means.
50:11 – At the top level of geopolitics there is a great deal of (secret) co-operation going on.
52:00 – We have to demand answers to specific questions such as, “Do we have a secret space programme?”, and demand to know what we don’t know.
1:20:00 – A wonderful look at Hobbes vs Locke
1:23:00 – They have “Know our Customer”. How about having “Know Your Representative”?
1:26:46 – Here’s a link I found of your amazing letter to Condoleeza Rice so others can read it and be inspired by your moral courage. http://www.serendipity.li/wot/ca_fitts01.htm
1:30:00 – Incompetence is a cover story.
1:33:00 – Hundreds of billions in the military budget so that nothing can come across our borers yet hundreds of billions of cocaine can fly back and forth.
Well, I am still at the anger and outrage stage. I find that the level of lying and cheating has reached epidemic proportions, so it is difficult to find people of integrity to deal with even in my daily life. I nevertheless hope that as I continue to listen to you and your guests I will learn how to maintain detachment, calm, balance and a sense of humour as both you and Amy suggest.
Andrew:
Glad you got so much out of this one.
Beware – I was very seriously poisoned shortly after writing the letter to Rice. So for people who have childcare or other family care obligations, I would recommend they let us single folks take on the more visible transparency tasks! UPI Picks picked it up so this one rocketed around the world and commanded far more attention than I dreamed possible. That said, glad I did it and lived to tell the tale. One of my naturapaths told me it was a miracle that I lived. Expect miracles!
Catherine
Catherine this was one of your top interviews.
Excellent!
Wow. I am so glad you liked it – great response. Transparency is such a powerful tool, so I am delighted to see how well this one is being received.
I absolutely love the way Amy’s organized the information. These days, as I learn so much from Solari folks, i often feel like I’m in a class but didn’t take the pre-requisites. That’s not a problem generally, insofar as I just go back until I hit a level where I can gain some understanding of the subject, then I go forward. That’s not a problem as the joy of learning is not to be understated; it’s a cure for many ills.
Amy’s very clear explication of the forms and processes of secrecy render a complex subject understandable and, dare I say, transparent?
Thanks Catherine. Thanks Amy.
🙂 Great seeing you!
Wonderful interview – courageous and intelligent discussions like this keep me going.
Hearing about Amy’s experience of “waking up” reminded me of a similar thing that happened to me.
I’d like to share a little idea that I heard years ago in relation to catching fire with an idea, etc. and then running around to set fire to everyone else’s house too in my enthusiasm: we are way-showers, not way-draggers. Remembering this has helped more than a little in keeping myself from alienating folks and yet feeling like there’s room to stand firmly in my own truth with integrity.
Yes. Hard lesson to learn for me too. Much better for everyone once I got it!