It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

Not if the FBI has anything to do with it. Check out Daniel Drezner's disquieting but link-rich thoughts on the subject. A teaser:

Let's say you're running the organization responsible for trying to track potential terrorists in the United States. Immediately after 9/11, let's say that one of your new employees tells you that some of the people doing necessary translating work (from Middle Eastern languages into English) are incompetent, helping to explain why relevant information never made it to the necessary links in the chain of command. What do you do?

A) Give this person a medal and start cleaning house;

B) Fire the person, request a gag order to prevent her from speaking publicly about the case, and attempt to retroactively label anything said about the case as a state secret?

You can imagine which choice was made. Read the whole thing for details.