Grumet opens with George Mitchell’s work in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. When the peace process nearly collapsed in 1999 over weapons decommissioning, public pressure and press attention at Stormont made negotiators unable to test concessions without seeming weak to their own factions. Mitchell moved leaders from both sides into private talks at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in London, where secrecy allowed trust to be rebuilt and the peace process to resume.

Grumet uses that episode to challenge the assumption that transparency is always the opposite of corruption. He argues that privacy, not secrecy, is often transparency’s true counterpart and can be necessary for honest negotiation. He points to the closed Constitutional Convention, the Great Compromise, Lincoln-era bargaining over abolition, and the private working relationship between Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Trent Lott as examples of consequential democratic work made possible by protected deliberation.

The chapter then traces how suspicion after Watergate and Vietnam, combined with new technology, transformed expectations of public access. C-SPAN made congressional proceedings visible, but Grumet argues it changed debate from colleague-to-colleague deliberation into performance for outside audiences. Newt Gingrich’s late-night speeches to an empty House illustrate how televised politics rewarded confrontation and spectacle, pushing real negotiations into smaller private leadership spaces.

Grumet broadens the critique to FOIA, the Sunshine Act, digital records, and open-government rules. These laws increased accountability, but they also made officials reluctant to write candid memos, send exploratory emails, or raise doubts that could later be exposed and weaponized. Because executive privilege protects only a narrow White House circle, administrations increasingly rely on White House czars rather than expert agencies, while Congress itself quietly seeks privacy when members need to discuss sensitive matters such as tax reform.

The chapter also examines federal advisory committees and state open-meeting laws, arguing that excessive procedural transparency can prevent diverse expert groups from working through difficult issues. FACA rules, the Deepwater Horizon commission’s constraints, and Washington State’s redistricting process show how public-meeting requirements can turn deliberation into posturing and force useful work into informal channels.

Grumet closes by calling for a new balance between transparency and deliberation. He cites the House Intelligence Committee, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve as institutions that combine private discussion with public accountability. He proposes protecting early-stage policy discussions, allowing commissions and lawmakers more private bipartisan deliberation, and reconsidering which internal communications should be exposed, arguing that democracy needs both sunlight and sheltered space for candor.