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July 14, 2005

Original Article (English)

The World's "No.1" tries to be the leader in everything, even in the number of "secrets."

According to a recent New York Times report, the number of official secret U.S. documents set an all-time high last year. About 15.6 million documents were classified as confidential, almost double the figure of 2001. At present, on average about 145 confidential documents are classified per minute. "Homeland security, sensitive information" and other fuzzy words have emerged. Even things that are historical and originally not secret, are now classified as "sensitive" and so become confidential matters of State. In the meantime, the release of documents has slowed. In 1997, the number of official U.S. documents declassified in 1997 came to about 200 million pages, while the number last year was only 28 million pages.

Just as the war on terror had made traveling in the United States more inconvenient, the increasing numbers of documents that are classified as secret are "by-products" of the counter-terrorist war. After the "September 11, 2001" incident, with a view toward guaranteeing homeland security, courts originally open to the public ceased being so; the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency were authorized to mark documents that had once been public as secret; and the Department of Justice declared certain if its documents no longer opened to the public.

Some so-called secrets sound funny. The Central Intelligence Agency's budgets from the 1950s and 60s are to this day still regarded as secrets. The reason cited is to "prevent America's enemies from analyzing the CIA's focus for state security.”

Those with a gentle mindset are usually sincere and transparent; while those with an impetuous mindset are often frightened and in a state of extreme nervousness, so they make more things secret. Too many secrets turns simple things into mysteries, "mistaking the shadow of a bow in one's cup for a snake," thus causing people to question the usefulness of the secrecy.

Theoreticians long ago refuted the U.S. government's reasoning for keeping so many secrets, the "fear of terrorists taking advantage of loopholes." Washington's failing to prevent the "September 11" tragedy wasn't due to the leakage of intelligence.  It was precisely because the general public and the government agencies involved didn't share intelligence that the catastrophe was not prevented.

Just like happiness, sometimes security is just a feeling. After using military force several times, President Bush has repeatedly stressed that the world has become safer. But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has refuted this claim several times, saying that he didn't feel that this world had become safer.

The increasing number of U.S. secrets reminds people of the image of three carved monkeys on the street: One monkey covers its eyes, another monkey plugs its ears, and the third one muffles its mouth. It seems that secrets have been kept, but security has not been achieved.