State secrets are necessary, no matter who is president, because safeguarding certain kinds of information stops America's enemies from doing us harm. They are also fraught, because when executive-branch officials can hide the truth, many abuse that power to cover up misdeeds. This tests the virtue of any administration'a test that Donald Trump's administration is failing. Its officials have recently betrayed a ludicrous double standard: They would have the public believe that the exact times at which F-18s will take off to attack an enemy and bomb its target are not classified, even prior to an attack, but also that, long after alleged undocumented immigrants are deported, national security demands that the time their deportation flights took off should remain secret. In short, they treat sensitive information with scandalous carelessness while invoking state secrets to hide facts that endanger no one. The first of these matters concerns a U.S. military attack on Houthi fighters in...
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