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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
State Secrecy: A Literature Review, Stephane Lefebvre
State Secrecy: A Literature Review, Stephane Lefebvre
Secrecy and Society
What is secrecy? What is a state secret? Which state secrets deserve protection from disclosures? How are state secrets protected from disclosure? In this review, I use these questions as an organizing framework to review the richness of a very disparate, largely US-centric, but also multidisciplinary literature. In doing so, I highlight the social nature of secrecy - that it is a social construct with social effects and consequences - and the need for further research to unveil those rationalities that specific discourses on state secrecy put forward to legitimize the nondisclosure of state secrets.
Murky Projects And Uneven Information Policies: A Case Study Of The Psychological Strategy Board And Cia, Susan Maret
Murky Projects And Uneven Information Policies: A Case Study Of The Psychological Strategy Board And Cia, Susan Maret
Secrecy and Society
This case study discusses the Truman and Eisenhower administration's (1951-1953) short-lived Psychological Strategy Board (PSB). Through the lens of declassified documents, the article recounts the history and activities of the Board, including its relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and clandestine projects that involve human experimentation. Primary documents of the period suggest that institutional secrecy, coupled with inconsistent information policies, largely shielded CIA's BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA from the Board. This subject has not been previously reported in the research literature, and supplements existing historical understanding of the PSB's mission under the broad umbrella of psychological warfare.