Kissinger was not rushing to end our conversation that morning, and I had one more
message to give him. “Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth,
something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and
you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole
slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.
“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just
acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these
clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects
of reading the information that they will make available to you.
“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all―so
much! incredible!―suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like
a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed
decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this
information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced
their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish
for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants
who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they
had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve
started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to
whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top
secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be
aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t… and that all those other
people are fools.
“Over a longer period of time―not too long, but a matter of two or three years―you’ll
eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it
doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New
York Times can. But that takes. a while to learn.
“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who
doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same
advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental
exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues… and with myself.
“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of
view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with,
since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to
manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll
become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in
the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may
be much greater than yours.”
It was a speech I had thought through before, one I’d wished someone had once given
me, and I’d long hoped to be able to give it to someone who was just about to enter the
world of “real” executive secrecy. I ended by saying that I’d long thought of this kind of
secret information as something like the potion Circe gave to the wanderers and
shipwrecked men who happened on her island, which turned them into swine. They
became incapable of human speech and couldn’t help one another to find their way home.
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Dammit. This quote makes me feel even more of a pawn in the grand scheme of things.
Literally nobody else can see through your eyes. That’s a pretty privileged point of view. Does that help at all?