{"id":6401,"date":"2023-06-09T09:49:40","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T13:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=6401"},"modified":"2023-06-09T09:49:43","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T13:49:43","slug":"official-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/06\/09\/official-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Official Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twenty-Five Years<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For the first thirteen years of my life, I didn\u2019t know much about my Mom.\u00a0\u00a0Oh, I knew she was from England, and devoted to her family here in America,\u00a0\u00a0and her family at \u201chome\u201d, especially her father and the Queen.\u00a0\u00a0As my eldest sister Terry says, Mom made England into a \u201cfairyland\u201d for us.\u00a0\u00a0Mom was the youngest in her family by far, \u201cBabs\u201d (for baby) to them and the rest of the world.\u00a0\u00a0Even when some of her siblings were estranged from each other, they all welcomed Babs and her family to their homes.\u00a0\u00a0To us, everyone smiled in England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I heard some rumors from my sisters and Dad about what Mom did during World War II. But she really told me nothing about it.\u00a0\u00a0That is, until I was thirteen years-old, in the back seat of a 1963 Ford station wagon with Terry driving \u2013 Mom didn\u2019t drive.\u00a0\u00a0We were in Kettering, heading south towards I-75 on the South Dixie Highway.\u00a0\u00a0It was one of those events I can detail, like a car wreck (we didn\u2019t) or a tragedy.\u00a0\u00a0Mom turned to me and said, \u201cIt\u2019s been twenty-five years since the end of the war. I\u2019m now free to talk about \u2018most\u2019 of what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Act<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Mom was a spy for England\u2019s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the War.\u00a0(There\u2019s lots of essays about that,\u00a0click here<\/a>\u00a0to see some.)\u00a0She went into Nazi occupied territory over and over again. Mom helped organize resistance activities, delivered important messages, and sabotaged Nazi troop movements.\u00a0\u00a0Dad knew about it, because he knew the Americans she worked with, and I\u2019m sure he got a better inkling from Mom.\u00a0\u00a0But generally, Mom didn\u2019t talk about her work in World War II until 1970, twenty-five years after, when her oath of secrecy under the British Official Secrets Act finally expired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom knew how to keep a secret.\u00a0\u00a0And she knew what her obligations were under the law, British Law, even decades after the War was over.\u00a0\u00a0She kept her secrets even from her family and friends, so much so that there was always a note of skepticism from our British cousins when we mentioned it later.\u00a0\u00a0After all, they, her direct family, didn\u2019t know. (That is, except for her oldest brother, who was engaged in similar work.\u00a0\u00a0They ran into each other at a mission briefing).\u00a0\u00a0My grandparents thought that Mom was going to work at the \u201cOld-Age Pension Office\u201d during the War, though I suppose they too had some inkling.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cOld-Age Pension\u201d officials didn\u2019t consistently go on weeks-long trips, completely out of contact from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep the Faith<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Secrets, Government secrets, were important.  The SOE was merged into British Intelligence (MI-6) after the war.  The methods, tactics and some of the personnel that fought the War against the Nazis went onto fight the Cold War against the Soviet Union.  Things they did during the War came back to help (or haunt) in the 1950\u2019s and 60\u2019s.  So keeping secrets was important, not just to the past, but to the present and future operatives.  Mom understood that only too well; of the ninety-six members of her SOE unit, she was one of only five to survive the War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I come from a family well aware of government secrets.\u00a0\u00a0And we learned the cost of those secrets, not just in terms of the government, but to individuals as well.\u00a0\u00a0The SOE sometimes sent agents with mis-information into the field, set up, unknown to them, to be captured.\u00a0\u00a0They would fight to retain their secrets, until the Nazi torture brutally wrung it out of them.\u00a0\u00a0And those hard kept secrets, given finally to the enemy, got the Nazis to believe things that weren\u2019t true.\u00a0\u00a0It was all part of Duty to Country: sacrifice one to save hundreds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revelation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So when folks seem cavalier with our Government\u2019s secrets, it makes me concerned.\u00a0\u00a0I understood when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the \u201cPentagon Papers\u201d, showing that our Government consistently lied in the Vietnam War.\u00a0\u00a0No lives were at risk, it was “just” a history the Pentagon didn\u2019t want Americans to know.\u00a0\u00a0But when folks that I generally agree talk about Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning as \u201cheroes\u201d, I disagree.\u00a0\u00a0How many lives were lost because of the secrets they revealed?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when a former President of the United States proves to be careless with our secrets while in office, and even more dismissive of them after he is out of power, I shudder.\u00a0\u00a0When then-President Trump revealed shared secret Israeli information to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov about Syria, it is said that an Israeli informant died in Damascus.\u00a0\u00a0How many lives are at risk with Top Secrets scattered around a dinner club in Palm Beach?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday it was revealed (by the Trump side) that a Federal Grand Jury has indicted Donald J Trump, the 45th<\/sup> President of the United States, on seven criminal counts. Some are violations of the Espionage Act, America\u2019s version of the Official Secrets Act.\u00a0\u00a0As President, he accessed all of the United States\u2019 \u201csecrets\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0When his Presidency ended, he chose to keep some of those secrets for himself.\u00a0\u00a0After years of negotiations, obfuscation, falsification and obstruction; the Justice Department was pushed to take him to Court.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we are, a former President learning the \u201chard way\u201d how important secrets are.  Mom would approve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-Five Years For the first thirteen years of my life, I didn\u2019t know much about my Mom.\u00a0\u00a0Oh, I knew she was from England, and devoted to her family here in America,\u00a0\u00a0and her family at \u201chome\u201d, especially her father and the Queen.\u00a0\u00a0As my eldest sister Terry says, Mom made England into a \u201cfairyland\u201d for us.\u00a0\u00a0Mom was … Continue reading “Official Secrets”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nOfficial Secrets : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/06\/09\/official-secrets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Official Secrets : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Twenty-Five Years For the first thirteen years of my life, I didn\u2019t know much about my Mom.\u00a0\u00a0Oh, I knew she was from England, and devoted to her family here in America,\u00a0\u00a0and her family at \u201chome\u201d, especially her father and the Queen.\u00a0\u00a0As my eldest sister Terry says, Mom made England into a \u201cfairyland\u201d for us.\u00a0\u00a0Mom was … Continue reading "Official Secrets"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2023\/06\/09\/official-secrets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Our America - 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