The Massachusetts ACLU “PrivacySOS” blog has the following article summarizing and linking to Michael J. Glennon’s “National Security and Double Government”, a 114-page study of how the US through its legal and political blundering has backed into a separate and almost autonomous national security state with a dignified front.
Massachusetts ACLU PrivacySOS: When it comes to fighting the “double state”, knowledge is power
From Glennon’s study:
Large segments of the public continue to believe that America’s constitutionally established, dignified institutions are the locus of governmental power; by promoting that impression, both sets of institutions maintain public support. But when it comes to defining and protecting national security, the public’s impression is mistaken. America’s efficient institution makes most of the key decisions concerning national security, removed from public view and from the constitutional restrictions that check America’s dignified institutions. The United States has, in short, moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system–a structure of double government–in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy.
Another sample:
The Trumanites have [many] incentives to keep information to themselves. Knowing that information in Washington is power, they are, in the words of Jack Balkin, both information gluttons and information misers. They are information gluttons in that they “grab as much information as possible”; they are information misers in that they try to keep it from the public. Potential critics, power competitors, and adversaries are starved for information concerning the Trumanite network while it feasts on information concerning them. The secrecy of Trumanite activities thus grows as the privacy of the general public diminishes and the Trumanites’ shared “secret[s] of convenience” bind them more tightly together.
