Government secrecy is harmful to all citizens in the United States because it has been a reoccurring theme for a far too long time, citizens have the right to know the information the government is withholding about their country, and be aware of the choices our government is making to fix this problem. Since the Cold War the lack of transparency in our government has effected the population as a whole. “Some agents could provide information about communist activities. The others were more suited to taking action. For example, what the KGB called, ”agents of influence” might need to be recruited: those who could influence decision making either directly (if he was a politician or a government official, for example) or indirectly (like a journalist willing to print propaganda in his newspaper).” (Grey 11).
They would use this technique to get information out there to the general public without them knowing what they were hearing. This would make it extremely confusing what our government was doing with the Soviet Union. The KGB to Russia is like the CIA to the US. This covert action was dangerous, but required president approval. This means that the government has been perfecting there technique for holding on to important information. The rights of an American citizen were established for a reason. After the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford put forth the effort to put the Privacy Act Amendments of 1974 into effect. Patrick Martin said that the bush administration pressured the media to cover up the adversaries of the war drive in Central Asia. It is unacceptable that a president would abuse his power by keeping a whole country in the dark over information that could change the outcome of our country. W. Bush was protecting the country from terrorists, but indirectly expanding the power of the FBI to spy on wireless phone calls. The FBI