# Secret State **Domain:** State Secrecy / Intelligence / Democratic Accountability **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/War With Empire|War With Empire]] ## Definition **The secret state is the portion of state power whose institutions, operations, relationships or records are withheld from ordinary public visibility through classification, official secrecy, covert practice or institutional non-acknowledgement.** The concept directs attention to how secrecy is organized and how concealed functions interact with the visible state. The category does not imply that every secret function is illegitimate. Intelligence and security work require protected information. The constitutional issue is whether secrecy protects a bounded capability or prevents elected officials, courts, legislatures, journalists and the public from establishing what power exists and how it is used. ## Intellectual Lineage E. P. Thompson's 1979 essay _The Secret State_ analyzed British security institutions and their limited democratic visibility. Richard Thurlow later used the term for his archival history of British internal security. Contemporary scholarship continues to use the framework for the Information Research Department and the networked relationship between intelligence, diplomacy, media and private intermediaries. ## War With Empire Context [[articles/war with empire/The Real Deep State Is British|The Real Deep State Is British]] places the secret state beside [[wiki/Permanent Government|Permanent Government]], [[wiki/Security State|Security State]] and [[wiki/Deep State|Deep State]] without treating them as synonyms. Secret state names concealment; the article's larger argument concerns how concealed capability can persist and migrate across changes in government, territory and institutional form. ## Key Insight **Secrecy is not the absence of state structure; it is one way state structure is organized and made selectively visible.** ## See Also [[wiki/Permanent Government|Permanent Government]], [[wiki/Security State|Security State]], [[wiki/Deep State|Deep State]], [[wiki/Clandestine Statecraft|Clandestine Statecraft]], [[wiki/Voluntary Censorship|Voluntary Censorship]], [[wiki/Information Research Department|Information Research Department]]