Abstract 

In recent years, security agencies have increasingly faced legal and public demands to provide records of their operations. These demands for transparency reflect a widely held belief that comprehensive record-keeping serves as a fundamental mechanism for eliminating illegal practices. According to this view, secrecy is indicative of illegality, creating a space excluded from the reach of the rule of law.
In this research, we argue that official documentation may be viewed as a performative act aimed at challenging these prevailing notions about secrecy. While at times enhancing transparency, it also serves as a tool to shape perceptions about the very information that is being held, legitimizing what remains secret and detaching it from its illegal connotations.
To this end, we analyze reports produced by the Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency) documenting interrogations in high-profile security cases. Shin Bet interrogations are exempt from standard police record-keeping requirements, providing summaries (in Hebrew: Zichron Dvarim) that offer a mediated account of the interrogation. These documents are designed to reveal key information for the sake of legal scrutiny, while also officially acknowledging that they are partial and that some parts of the interrogation remain secret. Therefore, they provide a unique opportunity to understand how security agencies negotiate transparency and secrecy in legal contexts.
Through an empirical examination, we explore the rhetorical strategies employed in these records. We analyze how they construct meaning through linguistic choices, narrative structures, and selective disclosure. These discursive strategies evoke representations and justifications of what remains hidden, effectively detaching secrecy from illegality.
While existing literature on state secrets has long acknowledged how states use secrecy to project power and create social boundaries, our findings uncover how the performance of secrecy may occur within the very framework of disclosure itself. By critically analyzing how concealment operates through acts of communication, we reconceptualize the complex interplay between state secrecy, bureaucratic transparency, and the evolving demands of the rule of law.