As Top Secret ended its final run at the Skirball Cultural Center, the Los Angeles Times published an excellent preview piece, and a later op-ed relating the Pentagon Papers episode to current events, and there have been a number of stories about the impressive slate of events held as part of the collaboration between Top Secret and Sunshine Week, including a panel that followed the March 13 performance, (which was replayed in radio form on KPCC-FM in Los Angeles on June 28). The dialogue after the final live performance was led by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition. Panelists were  David C. Kohler, former CNN general counsel who now is director of the Donald E. Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute and Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles; and Marc Cooper, lecturer and associate director of USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. "This partnership provides an exciting and creative new avenue to engage people in the discussion about how important it is to our democracy to protect people's right to information," said David Westphal, Washington editor for McClatchy Newspapers and co-chair of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee." You can also view two of the post-show panels including John Dean and Bob Shear.  Sunshine Week is a national initiative that encourages discussions about the importance of open government and freedom of information led by ASNE. Additionally, two new books, one about Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell (which has been garnering attention and controversy), and one about the history of research at the  RAND corporation, will be sure to continue to provide insight into this historical period. UPDATE: The Boston Globe recently published an excellent op-ed from its former editor commemorating the anniversary of their publication of the Pentagon Papers.

A recent piece in Slate ("I Want My Pentagon Papers!") asks whether a recent New York Times article on a report by RAND Corp. regarding the Iraq war planning would be equivalent to a modern-day Pentagon papers, and questions whether the Times should release full the text of the report, and the Daily Kos asked the same question about a recent Pentagon Report that characterized the war as a 'debacle'. Meanwhile, the Top Secret tour wrapped up a performance at Penn State University   (video), and one at the University of Pennsylvania that was met with acclaim by the Philadephia Inquirer and other outlets . The show's final performance  after its 23-city tour will be in Los Angeles this March. The issues explored by this docudrama take on an even deeper resonance as Congress debates secrecy in the reform proposals and liability implications for the nation's wiretapping programs, as the executive enacts cuts in funding for the ombudsman position of the recently reformed FOIA system, and as presidential candidates debate ways to break the current culture of secrecy.

The theatre section of the Washington Post, the newspaper that itself is a key subject of Top Secret, published a glowing article and photo slide show about the play, as a precusor to the engagement at the University of Maryland, which featured a pre-show discussion that brought former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and Daniel Ellsberg together for their first-ever meeting. The panel was moderated by American Journalism Review President Thomas Kunkel and the performance was attended by several key figures who were subjects of the play.This came after very successful events in Iowa,  critically-acclaimed performances ("It's no Secret: these guys can act!") in Sprinfield, Illinois and WashU, insightful panels in Columbia, Mo.  (which will be rebroadcast and webstreamed on KBIA on March 9),  good reviews at UConn (hailing a "Top" notch performance), and an Asheville, N.C.  peformance that was a source of lasting inspiration, as was the Wake Forest presentation, a recording of which was aired and web-streamed live on WFDD on Feb. 10. (the same day as the Sarasota, Fl. performance). The tour continues to Penn State on Feb. 13 and then on to California in March. 

The Spring Tour of "Top Secret: the Battle for the Pentagon Papers" has begun with a comprehensive and exciting kick-off at Wake Forest University which is generating great 'buzz' , including a review calling it a "joy to watch" and an excellent column about the actress playing Katherine Graham. As part of that university's "Voices of our Time" series, the performance will be accompanied by an address by Daniel Ellsberg, as well as radio broadcasts. The Wake Forest engagement will be followed by a two-day performance at the Diana Wortham Theatre in North Carolina, and then on to a great program at  University of Richmond Jan 22-23, which is being widely anticipated. There are also compelling events planned to accompany the performance on Jan. 28-29 at the University of Iowa, as well as mounting excitement for the Feb. 6 Concord, N. H. performance. Click here to read what audiences are saying about the play.

On Wednesday evening, Congress passed the first FOIA Reform bill in a decade to the praise of freedom of information groups. Meanwhile, the Senate is working on a FISA reform bill that it will seek passage for during the beginning of next year, and the CIA has agreed to work with the House on the 'torture tape' investigation.

As Washington fumes and demands answers in light of the leak of the destruction of the CIA "torture tapes", the House, Senate, and Executive are all promising investigations, and are focusing the nation's attention on the potential CIA abuses of the classification system and national archiving policies. Key texts in understanding the CIA and classification systems include Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes and Ted Gup's Nation of Secrets (which was subject of a recent discussion).  These developments also come on the heels of more decisions favoring secrecy over transparency, such as the DOJ opinion that the Vice-President's office is exempt  from classification rules, and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's rulings will remain under seal. Meanwhile, former Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh has released a memoir on "Integrity", and Daniel Ellsberg is supporting other whistleblowers.

The Fall 2007 tour of Top Secret, which opened in Hampton, Va., visited universities across the country, including Stanford, and concluded with a performance in Omaha, Nebraska -- picking up critical acclaim along the way. Preparations for the 2008 tour are underway, and the kick-off for the second leg of the national tour will be at Wake Forest University on Jan. 17. But as the tour closed, revelations surfaced about the New York Times, once again withholding information at the request of government officials: "The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years... The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.... Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program." Does this represent another example of the Times holding the story to prevent upsetting a political balance, as it has been accused of doing with the NSA wiretapping story, or is an example, as piece author David Sanger claims, of the Times holding the story only until as long as necessary for security matters. The discussions around this and other topics will be dynamic as the 2008 tour gets underway.

The University of Nebraska 'Echoes of Project X' Symposium was a huge success in Lincoln this week. Both pre- and post-production discussions were hosted by playwright Geoffrey Cowan and events included a discussion with former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, Thomas Jefferson Center director Robert O'Neil, UNL Journalism professor John Bender and UNL law professor Eric Berger. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus made remarks, and it was capped off by an address by Daniel Ellsberg. Video of the event is available here.

As the national tour of Top Secret moves from Hampton, Va. and  Collegeville, Minn., excitement is building in upcoming locations, such as Oxford, Ohio , University of Nebraska,  Scottsdale, Ariz.,  Tucson, Ariz., and the University of Arkansas.  At the same time the production is taking off at full steam, the U.S. House debated and passed a reporter's shield bill, which now makes its way to the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved its own bill, and now the reconciliation process will take place despite White House promises to veto. The Citizen Media Law Project analyzes the merits of each bill.

"It's the Secrecy, Stupid" was the title of Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin's prominent legal blog post about the FISA-NSA wiretapping reform bills that now seem to have passed their hurdles in the Senate, having been favorably reported out of the Select Committe on Intelligence. The reforms, would give retro-active immunity to telecommunication companies, who, as the Washington Post revealed (but the companies themselves refuse to confirm or deny) engaged in wiretapping even before receiving explicit congressional authorization to do so. The proposals have been widely criticized by legal experts, but seem likely to pass Congress and be signed into law this week. UPDATE: Harper's provides an insightful analysis of Balkin's blog post and Marty Lederman's reply in light of the recent refusal by National Intelligence Director McConnell to release National Intelligence Estimates. Meanwhile, even Congressional Committees are having difficulty obtaining information about the administration's policies on the telecommunication immunity measures.

The leak of the latest in the line of "Torture Memos" -- written legal opinions in which the Department of Justice tries to give justification for its approving stance on the Orwellian- named 'enhanced interrogation techniques' -- has been able to shift the political debate in Washington as the new attorney general nomination is considered. The "Bradbury Memos" , named for the Justice Department official who authorized their promulgation, have created a backdrop that sounds in echo of the anti-totalitarian classic "Farenheit 451". Neither calls for their release nor the appeal to national conscience has led to transparency or retraction.  Coupled with new disclosures that raise questions about the CIA's own inspector general and his department, the secrecy that has for years gripped so tightly by the C.I.A., and now encouraged by the White House, is seemingly strangling only itself more strongly than the enemies it is trying to overcome.