DemocracyNow! has made chapter 1 of Scott Horton’s book “Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy” freely available.

A few excerpts:

Secrecy is highly corrosive to any democracy.

The way a country goes about making vital decisions about its national security is a good sign of whether a country’s claims to be democratic are genuine.

In most nominal democracies, the people have no say about whether their nation goes to war or makes peace.

Today Americans know less about what their national security forces are doing than ever before.