...In the vast majority of drug experiments, it is not uncommon for none or one or two of hundreds of patients to benefit from the drug.

These human experiments have gone largely unchallenged and unquestioned by Congress, the medical profession, and the scientific community at large.

There are benefits in the sense that there's still a certain level of confidence. But there are liabilities because you can coordinate and manipulate better as the instruments of oversight are more under your control. You don't have so many rogue operations.

Every effort is made to control information. Secrecy is just one of the toggles on their control board. The mindset is in place, and they've done a lot of hiring over eight years, not just political appointees. And they've done a lot of firing or driving people out who might have countermanded or resisted. So, institutionally, it's not going to be simply a matter of flipping the switch to undo it. You're going have to bring in people dedicated to transparency, and you have to demonstrate that there are rewards for candor.

The mechanics vary from place to place and from office to office. The handling of SBUs can be different in the same agency just across the hall, one from another. There are virtually no standards.

Secrecy doesn't attach to particular parties; it attaches to power. All of the bull work is in place for whomever succeeds. That's my concern.

Another factor is the post-9/11 security mentality, which views sunlight as toxic and imagines that somehow bin Laden is dependent upon our government documents, a "fact" that has never, ever been supported to my knowledge. So, that's the second factor.