The Memoir's Meaning

Amid bad faith efforts to block Bolton’s memoir, the public interest is clear: It lies in protecting legitimate secrets—and revealing presidential malfeasance in a timely manner. Two landmark cases help us understand how courts wrestle with and resolve such matters.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, is an opinion columnist for USA Today and a contributing editor at The American Interest. Portions of this article were adapted from his Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law (W.W.Norton).