The Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations recently hosted Thomas Blanton, who spoke on the downsides of government secrecy.
The Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations seeks to promote study and discussion of the development, formulation, and implementation of United States foreign policies by means of a program of speakers, the organization of discussion and study groups, and the production and distribution of relevant materials.
Since 1992, Blanton has served as director the independent non-governmental National Security Archive at George Washington University.
He won the 2004 Emmy Award for individual achievement in news and documentary research, and on behalf of the Archive received the George Polk Award in 2000 for “piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy.”
The National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame elected him a member in 2006, and Tufts University presented him the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award in 2011 for “decades of demystifying and exposing the underworld of global diplomacy.”
His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among many other journals; and he is series co-editor for the National Security Archive’s online and book publications of more than a million pages of declassified U.S. government documents obtained through the Archive’s more than 60,000 Freedom of Information Act requests.
Listen to the talk at: Midcoast Forum, Thomas Blanton.
Those interested in learning more about the Forum or seeing future speaker events can visit midcoastforum.org. The Maine Monitor will periodically share recordings of the Forum’s talks.
