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"Secrecy," Cardinal Richelieu maintained, "is the first essential in affairs of the state." Our latter-day Richelieus in Government Buildings would undoubtedly concur, writes Patrick Smyth

Not so Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the venerable former Senator for New York, who died last Thursday. No radical or liberal he - his name is more likely to be associated with a neo-conservatism whose ideological underpinnings this hawkish Democratic intellectual began to lay decades ago. But Moynihan was also a formidable critic of government secrecy whose pernicious influence, he believed, would lead the US down massive blind alleys that would cost it billions and jeopardise world peace.