Anopen secret is information that was originally intended to be confidential but has at some point been disclosed and is known to many people.[1] Open secrets aresecrets in the sense that they are excluded from formal or official discourse, but they areopen in the sense that they are familiar and referred to in idioms and language games, though these often require explanation for outsiders.[2]
One famous open secret is that ofArea 51, aUnited Statesmilitary base containing an aircraft testing facility.[3] The U.S. government did not explicitly affirm the existence of any military facility nearGroom Lake,Lincoln County,Nevada, until 2013, when theCIA released documents revealing that the site was established to test spy planes.[4] While the general location of the base is now officially acknowledged, the base does not appear on government maps or in declassified satellite photography.[5] Yet despite this, the base was demonstrably and widely acknowledged to exist for many years before the CIA officially confirmed its existence.[6][7] The immense secrecy has made it the frequent subject ofconspiracy theories and a central component toUFOfolklore.[8]
TheNational Security Agency was formally established byPresident Truman in a memorandum of 24 October 1952, that revisedNational Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9.[9] Since President Truman's memo was aclassified document,[9] the existence of the NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy, the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency".[10]
The existence of theBritishSecret Intelligence Service (MI6) was widely known for several decades before the government's official acknowledgement of the organisation in 1994.[11]
Post Office Tower was completed in 1964 and information about it was designated an official secret, due to its importance to the national communications network. In 1978, the journalistDuncan Campbell wastried for collecting information about secret locations, and during the trial the judge ordered that the sites could not be identified by name; the Post Office Tower could only be referred to as "Location 23".[12] It was officially revealed byKate Hoey underparliamentary privilege in 1993.[13]
It is often said that the tower did not appear onOrdnance Survey maps, despite being a 177-metre (581 ft) tall structure in the middle of central London that was open to the public for about 15 years.[14] However, this is incorrect; the 1:25,000 (published 1971) and 1:10,000 (published 1981) Ordnance Survey maps show the tower.[15] It is also shown in theLondon A–Z street atlas from 1984.[16]
Israel iswidely acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons.[17] This can be considered an open secret, because the Israeli government has never explicitly stated whether or not it possesses a nuclear stockpile, officially maintaining apolicy of deliberate ambiguity.[18][19][20][21]
Camp Mirage is the codename for a formerCanadian Forces forward logistics facility located inDubai,United Arab Emirates. The facility was established in late December 2001 and, though not officially acknowledged by the Canadian Forces, was considered an open secret.[22]
Kayfabe, or the presentation ofprofessional wrestling as "real" or unscripted, is an open secret, kept displayed as legitimate within the confines of wrestling programs but openly acknowledged as predetermined by wrestlers and promoters in the context of interviews for decades.
In television, the primary real-world identity ofThe Stig, a costumed and masked television test-driver used byBBC Television forTop Gear, was an open secret until the unofficialembargo was broken by a newspaper in 2009.[23]
The identity of the white-suited Stig ... has been an open secret within the motoring world for some years, with newspapers refraining from publishing his name, to uphold the spirit of the programme.[dead link]