Mackenzie, Angus. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997. 241 pages.
In 1970, Angus Mackenzie launched a newspaper with his brother and two
friends. It was one of more than 500 alternative periodicals produced by the
counterculture. Most were harassed and infiltrated by local police, as well
as by the FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence. Mackenzie and many other
editors were arrested numerous times on trumped-up charges. When the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) was given new teeth, Mackenzie filed requests to
learn more about this repression. After long litigation and relentless
efforts to defend the First Amendment, he still didn't have the full story.
But he did have a garage full of official documents. His family published
this book from his notes, after Mackenzie died in 1994 from a brain tumor.
Several beginning chapters describe the repression of the sixties, and
the rest is a chronology of the machinations behind the FOIA from 1975 to
the present, as federal agencies progressively undermined the law. Defenders
of openness and free speech were out-maneuvered, especially the ACLU. The
favorite technique of the CIA requires that all employees sign a lifetime
secrecy contract. This stood up well in court, so the Pentagon used it as
a weapon against whistleblowers trying to expose waste and corruption. By
now the battle against secrecy has been lost, even though the Cold War is
over and the rationale for keeping secrets is largely extinct.
ISBN 0-520-20020-9
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