November 2005

Secret Keepers in the News

by John Prin
Addiction Counselor
Did you hear about America's secret prisons for suspected terrorists? That's right, according to Dana Priest of the Washington Post,* the CIA has created "an invisible universe" of secret detention facilities in as many as eight countries, including the now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In secret-keeping® parlance, I call this kind of secrecy "institutional secret-keeping" -- as distinguished from "individual" secret-keeping. It's the kind of conspiratorial secrecy that governments, corporations, and organizations perpetrate on a massive scale. Think Enron, the Catholic church, and the Soviet KGB.

Referred to as "black sites" in classified federal documents, these prisons are located overseas because it is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation for indeterminate periods of time in the U.S. Ever since 9-11, the emphasis has been "on keeping the system strictly secret from the public."

Clearly, this level of secrecy is beyond our personal scope. But it's out there, and it's troubling. If you are troubled on an "individual" level with secret-keeping (your own issues or somebody else's), feel free to contact me for help. I can listen and help you learn to recover from that unhealthy double life -- the secret-keeping attitudes and traps-- that wears you down.

Email John Prin your thoughts.

You can also reach me at 952-941-1870 or read my books, Stolen Hours: Breaking Free From Secret Addictions. and the sequel, Secret Keeping: Overcoming Hidden Habits and Addictions.

** Mpls. Star Tribune, Nov. 2, p. A9