I Want It All»

Melissa Boyle Mahle turned her CIA memoir into a movie called Secrecy. It sounds fantastic. Jeff Stein at CQ takes a glimpse.

One of its more interesting insights is how sexy secrets are.

“Secrecy is something like forbidden fruit,” former NSA official Mike Levin says, framed in harsh light, an ominous sound track playing.

“You can’t have it. It’s classified. That makes you want it more,” says Levin. “If somebody discloses that we listen to a cell phone that Osama bin Laden is using to talk to his deputy Zawahiri who’s in Peshawar, Pakistan, this fact would do damage to the national security. So it has to be kept classified.”

That’s just so through-the-uprights right-on. And it goes double for us nat-sec reporters. The first time you see a document you shouldn’t be seeing, it rivets you. It could be the stupidest piece of boneheaded analysis, but it’s extremely difficult not to treat that garbage as a gem. Our entire editorial structure — even for investigative reporters! — rewards gobbling that stuff up before Isi-nball or Sy or Pincus or Mazzetti or Linzer or whoever gets their grubby hands on it. Pretty soon the piece you write is overtaken by its subtext, which is I GOT THAT WORK AND YOU DON’T SO I’M BETTER.

And that way lies a lot of manipulation. Pretty soon a savvy administration figures out that playing off reporters’ vanity can allow it to plant a story about aluminum tubes proving an Iraqi nuclear weapons program is in an advanced stage. It’s nonsense, but all the reporter hears is it’s a secret and she has to print it in The New York Times.