Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law

Gabriel Schoenfeld "brilliantly illuminates" (Wall Street Journal) a growing rift between a press that sees itself as the heroic force promoting the public's "right to know" and a government that needs to safeguard information vital to the effective conduct of foreign policy. A masterful contribution to the enduring challenge of interpreting the First Amendment, Necessary Secrets offers a gripping account of how our national security, now and across the American past, has been compromised by disclosure of classified information.

About the Author :
Gabriel Schoenfeld is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. and a resident scholar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. His essays on national security and modern history have appeared in leading publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, the New Republic, the Atlantic, the National Interest, and Commentary, where he was senior editor from 1994 to 2008. Schoenfeld holds a PhD in political science from Harvard University.

Review :
"Illuminating, extremely intelligent, learned, engaging, and important. This is a truly great book-the best account ever of the relationship between the press and the government concerning the protection and disclosure of national-security secrets, one that is centrally relevant to manifold national-security debates today." -- Jack Goldsmith, author of The Terror Presidency "A serious work for a serious issue. Schoenfeld illuminates the complex history and the even more complicated present of America's struggle to balance security and free expression." -- General Michael V. Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA "Starred Review. [A] n intellectually muscular argument that chisels away at some cherished myths...A timely, sure-to-be controversial take on a problem that has no easy resolution." -- Kirkus Reviews "[A] provocative consideration of the conflict between the need for government secrecy and the role of a free press...succeeds in scrutinizing an issue of vital importance and putting it into a much broader context." -- Publishers Weekly "The weight of his book's scholarship, the timeliness of its publication and the audacity of its argument make it essential reading for anyone seriously interested in national security and freedom of the press in these testing times." -- Leonard Downie Jr. - Washington Post "In his aptly titled book Necessary Secrets, Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, has presented a subtle and instructive brief challenging the right of the press to make unilateral decisions to 'publish and let others perish'... Schoenfeld is scrupulously honest in discussing the real costs of unilaterally decisions by the press... [He] skillfully presents a counter-history of the famous cases of the 60s, 70s and 80s that established the Supreme Court's jurisprudence governing the right to publish secrets." -- Alan M. Dershowitz - The New York Times Book Review