Secrecy News Purged from State Dept History Mailing List
Secrecy News was removed from the distribution list for the U.S. State Department history publication “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) after we reported on errors in several FRUS volumes on March 24 and 26, 2008.
A spokesman for the State Department Historian’s Office confirmed that officials had ordered the removal of Secrecy News from the FRUS mailing list in response to our critical coverage.
In an email message to the series editor yesterday, I asked the Historian’s Office (HO) to reconsider its action. To do so would serve the best interests of FRUS, I suggested.
“I know that a sizable fraction of my Secrecy News mailing list (which now exceeds 13,500 self-selected subscribers) has an interest in FRUS publications. Many of those subscribers are unlikely to be part of other existing networks of academics and historians through which news of FRUS is disseminated,” I wrote.
“I would also willingly publish any criticism of my own writing that HO personnel or HAC [Historical Advisory Committee] members felt was warranted,” I added.
The request to reinstate Secrecy News on the FRUS mailing list awaits a decision by the State Department Historian, Dr. Marc J. Susser.
The proposed Office will resurrect the long-closed Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), the archive of which has been maintained by FAS for decades at https://ota.fas.org/.
If Congress needs help understanding the risks and rewards of a piece of technology, they shouldn’t have to rely solely on the sparknotes from a salesman. The rub is much simpler: Congress needs nerds.
If we set up the new OTA to do its job well, members will see it as the first stop to see what issues are lurking around the corner. They will bring their questions early. And they will keep coming back for more.
Even the best-designed policy rests on assumptions about who will staff it, how it will be funded, whether the responsible institutions have ever coordinated, and if the goals are achievable.