When Keeping Secrets Protects Mendacity

Your two-part series, “The Secret of the B-29” (April 18-19), did an amazing job of coherently and artfully recording a complex and fascinating story. Even though my sense of logic understands the practical, legal and societal difficulties of rectifying this error, my emotions, convictions and fundamental desire for confidence in a truthful government have been deeply hurt. Why must we continue to live with such a charade when mistakes are made? Is history so fragile that it cannot withstand the truth of the present?

Doug Clarkson

Irvine

*

Your story about the government’s fight for the right to keep state secrets confirmed what I have always felt about these secrets. They exist more to cover up crimes and misdeeds by the government than to keep secrets out of the hands of foreign enemies. I suspect more harm has been done to the rights and liberties we cherish than would ever have been endangered by any real vital secrets learned by our enemies. These enemies probably know our state secrets before we think they do, so the only real “gain” from state secrets is the loss of those rights, outlined in your story.

Mark Temple

Huntington Beach