juliet

It's not as though secrecy is black and white; that either you never explain the reason for anything, or else you publish the details of all your investigations on the internet. When I say "as clearly and publicly as possible", I take that to imply reasonable constraints.

It seems to be in the nature of secret organisations to be as secretive as possible, rather than merely as secretive as necessary. There's an interesting article in the current LRB arguing that the CIA should be abolished. I don't know whether to agree with the conclusion, but the article gives plenty examples of that phenomenon and how it has backfired in the past.