US Coiney Patriots want Complete transparency from the US State Department

US coiney fair-weather patriots expect complete transparency from the US State Department; they still want them to reveal the contents of correspondence with foreign governments about what illegally exported material the US will and will not try to stop at its borders. Michael Hayden has a piece about the wider implications of the same sort of "transparency", the leaking last week of 75 000 government documents about the war in Afghanistan. One passage of his sobering and thought-provoking text struck me as totally applicable to the "internationalist" coineys and their pathetic arguments against regulation of imports of illegally exported material:

foreign [organizations], with whom we have established productive and legitimate partnerships, will ask, "Can I trust the Americans to keep anything secret?" [...] what liaison service in the world will now accept any assurances that we can protect their secrets? Or protect their identity? Or be consistent in our policy? [...]And all of this because of some corrupted view of the inherent evils of the modern state, a pseudo-romantic attachment to the absolute value of transparency, a casual indifference to inevitable consequences and a neurotic attachment to one individual's self importance. Rarely have we seen such a dangerous combination of arrogance and incompetence.

Michael Hayden, WikiLeaks disclosures are a 'tragedy', CNN July 30, 2010