Thursday 9th December, 2010, 5.00pm
Seminar Room 4, New Arts Building

Cult of Secrecy

Seminar by
Dr Kenneth A. Duncan

Bio

Dr. Kenneth A. Duncan is a former senior United States diplomat with over a quarter century of experience in foreign relations, border security, intelligence, and international terrorism.  Before he retired from the Foreign Service, he was the Chairman of the Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism; as such he served as the National Intelligence Officer for Terrorism and was responsible for production, coordination and dissemination of all Intelligence Community terrorism-warning products.  Dr. Duncan holds a PhD from St Andrews in Modern History and has taught at courses on terrorism at the United States Coast Guard Academy and Yale University.  He is now Senior Adjunct Professor of Security Studies and Terrorism at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

Abstract

‘Secrecy is the first essential of the state,’ or at least so says Cardinal Richelieu.  The culture or cult of secrecy is deeply imbedded in human history and human nature.  This seminar on the ‘Cult of Secrecy’ will examine the uses and abuses of secrecy as illustrated by several recent events:  the unilateral release of secret information from the United States by courts in the United Kingdom in the case of former Guantanamo detainee bin Mohammed, the series of articles in the Washington Post newspaper by Dana Priest regarding the extent of secret world in the United States, and the impact of the release of secret information on Afghanistan on the WikiLeaks website.