Doubleplusungood.

I saw a very disturbing item in the national news briefs yesterday. Evidently, the Bush administration is “retroactively” classifying the number of nuclear weapons the United States had stockpiled during the cold war. According to the story (in the national news briefs of the August 21st Boston Globe), documents that reference the number of nuclear weapons held by the US during the Cold War now have the numbers blacked out. These figures were formerly public information. (See this story in the Times.)

I find this discouraging in two ways. First, it is frightening in the Orwellian sense. When politicians start manipulating and obfuscating historical records, we take one step closer to the memory holes of 1984. Soon we will see high school history books that talk about the US, England and Germany fighting the French and the Soviet Union in World War II.

Second, this kind of pointless secrecy has been the hallmark of every incompetent employer I have ever worked for. Discretion is one thing, but playing everything close to the vest simply because you don’t actually know what you can and can’t afford to reveal shows a lack of vision. Who knows what the Bush administration thinks it stands to gain by suddenly making history secret? The disturbing truth is that even the people responsible for this decision likely don't have a clue.