In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, I was stationed at the Second Marine Division as a communications watch officer with top-secret clearance. That meant I regularly locked myself in a crypto vault and broke coded messages from around the world.

The Lebanese incursion was under way, a Marine expedition, and so there was heavy encrypted radio traffic flowing into division headquarters.

What I encountered was instructive. Much of the material traveling under high classification was, for the most part, information I could obtain from reading the newspapers. That did not mean big secrets were being made public. It meant that innocuous information was being classified for unfathomable reasons.

Twenty years later, I was assistant secretary of state and State Department spokesman in the Carter administration. In that job, I regularly received and reviewed a large stream of highly classified material. I was also responsible for the department's Freedom of Information activities.

Again, much of what I saw behind closed doors was a puzzlement. Some of it was potentially embarrassing to the administration, much of it was boilerplate and only bits and pieces were of enough significance to be kept under classified lock and key.

With that as background, plus a couple of decades as a reporter covering foreign policy issues at home and abroad, I have come to a firm conclusion: The vast majority of all classified material could be released to the public without harming national security one iota.

And that is where this week's Sunshine Week comes in. It means to push back against the coordinated campaign to wall off the American people from the information they need to function effectively as citizens. It builds on some of the oldest propositions in this democratic republic.

Of course, the thought-controller's arguments are even older, dating back to the divine right of kings. They are "Father knows best" gone amok.

We're classifying tens of millions of documents to protect you — to guard national security — says Washington.

We're closing police records to guarantee a fair trial or preserve privacy interests, says City Hall.

We need closed-door meetings so to ensure frank exchanges and uninhibited debate, they say just about everywhere

And when all else fails, the debate-ending clincher in Washington always comes back to "national security." When that is invoked, we're supposed to shut up, salute and go back to watching "American Idol."

We shouldn't, despite the fact that there is a core of truth beneath what is otherwise a vast load of self-serving manure. There are secrets whose exposure would damage national security. They must be safeguarded. That much is true.

But the burden of proof in this society is on government. It is contemptible to hide behind national security to justify covering up failed policies and faked evidence. Telling the world when and where we intend to strike at an enemy force would obviously be a despicable act. Refusing to give Americans an honest accounting on the continued inability to provide enough armor-plating for our troop carriers is also despicable.

"Trust me" won't do. Ronald Reagan went to the heart of the matter two decades ago. "Trust, but verify," he memorably said. He was talking about dealing with the Soviet Union, but those should be the watchwords for free men and women everywhere when dealing with government.

Unfortunately, the climate in Washington — and in too many state capitals and county seats — is hostile to what the brave Soviet reformers of the l980s called "glasnost," openness.

Citing the necessities of war — a war undeclared by Congress and made open-ended by presidential declaration — federal agencies are classifying information at record rates. They are also simultaneously subverting the nation's hard-won Freedom of Information law, making it increasingly difficult to extract information from the packed warehouses where the federal bureaucracy hides the record of its activities behind locked doors.

Luckily, Americans have never been fond of Big Brother. When we stop to think about it, we can sort out the legitimate demands of national security from the limitless claims of big government.

The people should not have to prove a right to access. Our Revolution and our Constitution long ago settled that official information does not belong to the king — to the state. It belongs to the people, who are sovereign.

Democracy sickens without accountability. Accountability is impossible without the free flow of news and information, a point we make repeatedly when lecturing repressive regimes abroad.

Sunshine Week is the time to say it here at home, loud, clear and all together.

Hodding Carter III is a former newsman and government official, and now university professor of leadership and public policy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.