Unlocking Our Guarded History
Historians are expressing mixed emotions at the recent disgorging of the Central Intelligence Agency’s self-described “family jewels.” There is satisfaction that after a 15-year effort, the 702-page document—compiled at the direction of then CIA Director James R. Schlesinger in 1973—has finally been released to the public. There is also consternation that significant portions remain redacted and many details are still unclear. While a number of the activities described in the documents have long been known or surmised, some new information and nuances did emerge that will aide historians as they pursue their craft.
How we, and generations to come, regard individuals, agencies, policies and entire eras are largely the product of the essential stuff of history that historians get to work with. Few will argue that government secrets should routinely be revealed, even in the most open democracy on earth. But if our history is to have real value in guiding us in the present and shaping our future, it needs to be as complete as possible, and we need to know it as soon as practicable. The historian’s quest is for truth, but even those with the best intentions will have wildly different interpretations of truth—generally coinciding with or buttressing their own particular perspective. We are all guilty of that.
In our cover story on our collective memory of the American Revolution, historian John Ferling recounts how the Founding Fathers all had a keen interest in how history regarded them and their actions, quoting John Adams as saying: “The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other.”
More than two centuries later, historians are still sifting through the Revolution’s historical records to discern fact from fiction. Within minutes of the release of the CIA documents, they were available to anyone on the globe with an Internet connection. Does the release of this information, even as belatedly as three decades after it was compiled, harm us or help us? Is this more about influencing the present or understanding the past? For historians, the answers should be clear. As dark as some of the actions may appear to us today, however, it is also the historian’s sometimes difficult responsibility to remind us of the context of the times in which those events took place and the competing motivations that surrounded them.
