Ending secrecy over the Saudis and 9/11? It’s about time.

In his 1998 book on secrecy, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) affirmed that some of it is necessary to protect government’s deliberative processes, and to conceal the sources, methods and fruits of intelligence-gathering. He also argued, however, that covetous and rivalrous government bureaucracies regard their secrets as property, hiding them from other bureaucracies, with which they sometimes barter secrets. The U.S. Army did not tell President Harry S. Truman that the Venona intercepts of 2,900 Soviet communications proved that Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were spies, knowledge that would have calmed two national controversies.