Stats for nerds
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2017–2020years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- My goal was not to rehabilitate McCarthy or give aid and comfort to Holocaust deniers but to point out that there was a lot of Soviet espionage activity, which the article implies was not the case. I strongly encourage you to read Patrick Moynihan's "Secrecy" book for a nuanced view of the policy challenges of managing secrets, diplomacy, and counter-intelligence in a way that preserves democracy.
- "McCarthy had, in fact, no such list. He did not have even a single name."
The FBI Venona project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project) detected a significant number of Soviet spies operating in the US during the "McCarthy period." After the fall of the Berlin Wall a number of documents were recovered from the East Germany that substantiated the FBI work. Senator (D) Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about this in detail in "Secrecy" https://www.amazon.com/Secrecy-Experience-Daniel-Patrick-Moy... (See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moynihan_Commission_on_Governm... for context)
- I am not sure your timeline is correct. For example, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/ven... implies US counter-intelligence efforts against Soviets under the Venona project continued until 1980. There were and are doubtless other counterinteligence efforts that ran in parallel and continue to this day. Moynihan's "Secrecy" book explores in detail how intelligence information gets politicized and suggests some policies to minimize that. Using secrets for political ends no doubt occurred and continues to occur and is not limited to any particular party or government department. My point was that there is strong evidence for significant Soviet espionage activity, which the article implies was not the case.
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan[0] wrote a book called Secrecy. If I remember it correctly, I took away two main points:
* A highly valuable asset within government is information and thus workers are incentivized to hoard it and protect its value, including by classifying it and not sharing it (i.e., keeping secrets).
* Secrecy can lead to extraordinarily bad results. Instead of being exposed to open debate, the secret information or idea is restricted to a few insiders who lack diverse perspectives, can easily form an echo chamber, or who may be politically pressured or desirous to support the conclusion.
[0] Unusual career, if you don't know of him: Senator, PhD. and published sociologist, Ambassador to India and the UN, White House advisor on urban affairs. With his deep skills and experience in both research and government, few are more qualified to talk about these things.
