Government Secrecy in an Open Democracy

The analogies used by Michael Wolfstone (letter, Dec. 15) to criticize The Times’ Dec. 11 editorial, “Cheney Wins, Public Loses,” miss the mark. It is absurd to accord a high-level government group tasked with formulating national energy policy the same right to secret deliberations as that given to planners of military strategy or the board of directors of a private corporation, as Wolfstone apparently does. Vice President Dick Cheney’s group was to help in the formulation of energy policy, a nonclassified matter whose drafting is of manifest interest to the citizenry. In a government whose workings are supposed to be maximally transparent, it is clearly undesirable and, one hopes, unnecessary to solicit secret advice from those deemed to be experts on the issue under study. If, as Cheney has suggested, some potential government consultants from the private sector would be unwilling to provide advice unless their identities are concealed, it would seem that these are precisely the consultants we don’t want.

James K. Knowles

Sierra Madre