In order to have a civil, healthy, and vibrant society, that society needs to be transparent and open with those that are the members of that society. The reason that this is so, is because a heathy society is built upon trusting one another, and that trust exists best in a construct in which there is enough information freely available to everyone that makes it clear what is really going on. After all, those things that we cannot verify, because they are deliberately hidden from us or are complete unknowns to us, are the very things which are inimical to a healthy society, because without the necessary information to understand what is going on and why, we are therefore at a loss to know whether such is a menace to us or not.
While there are legitimate reasons for secrecy, even within that legitimacy though, there needs to be a reasonable degree of both oversight, as well as an understanding of the purpose, so of. Indeed, sensible people and governments understand when secrets are needed, but they also are quite aware that agencies that are created with secret agendas, can easily morph into being catastrophic to the people, at large, because those that are the operators of these secret agencies, can be emboldened to take actions in secret, that they would never have been permitted to do in the open and then not be held accountable for bad outcomes.
The danger of secret agencies and their secrets, is the fact that those that are the operators of such, will simply run their agencies in a manner that fits the interests of whoever is the director of such, come what may. That is to say, there isn’t any Congressional oversight, and there sure the heck isn’t any Presidential oversight, for these secret agencies are so well entrenched and protected by those that have their reins upon the hidden power within the American governance they therefore do whatever that they so desire to do, without any countervailing force being able to constrain or to contain their actions, whatsoever.
What happens in secret, stays hidden in that secret place, which is why the most heinous crimes and deeds against sovereign nations and foreign peoples are accomplished through our secret agencies, of which, the American people have little or no information that informs the general public of what their nation has secretly done, under their name. The clear and present danger of all these secret agencies and their secret agendas is that they thus serve as a shadow government, completely unanswerable to the American people – though using the excuse that what they are doing is for the defense and protection of the people, which serves well their purpose, though that is actually seldom true.
Indeed, all those that are up to no good, do not ever want the actions that they are doing, to be transparent to anyone. So then, the default belief that is reasonable to hold, is that when our government insists that this or that needs to be secret for our own good, we can reasonably assume that what they are really saying is that they are up to no good, and have no willingness to divulge what is really going on, because it would surely frighten us or worse.