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AbstractThis article sets out a framework for studying the power of secrecy in security discourses. To date, the interplay between secrecy and security has been explored within security studies most often through a framing of secrecy and security as a 'balancing' act, where secrecy and revelation are binary opposites, and excesses of either produce insecurity. Increasingly, however, the co-constitutive relationship between secrecy and security is the subject of scholarly explorations. Drawing on 'secrecy studies', using the US 'shadow war' as an empirical case study, and conducting a close reading of a set of key memoirs associated with the rising practice of 'manhunting' in the Global War on Terrorism (GWoT), this article makes the case that to understand the complex workings of power within a security discourse, the political work of secrecy as a multilayered composition of practices (geospatial, technical, cultural, and spectacular) needs to be analysed. In particular, these layers result in the production and centring of several secrecy subjects that help to reproduce the logic of the GWoT and the hierarchies of gender, race, and sex within and beyond special operator communities ('insider', 'stealthy', 'quiet', and 'alluring' subjects) as essential to the security discourse of the US 'shadow war'.

This article sets out a framework for studying the power of secrecy in security discourses. To date, the interplay between secrecy and security has been explored within security studies most often through a framing of secrecy and security as a 'balancing' act, where secrecy and revelation are binary opposites, and excesses of either produce insecurity. Increasingly, however, the co-constitutive relationship between secrecy and security is the subject of scholarly explorations. Drawing on 'secrecy studies', using the US 'shadow war' as an empirical case study, and conducting a close reading of a set of key memoirs associated with the rising practice of 'manhunting' in the Global War on Terrorism (GWoT), this article makes the case that to understand the complex workings of power within a security discourse, the political work of secrecy as a multilayered composition of practices (geospatial, technical, cultural, and spectacular) needs to be analysed. In particular, these layers result in the production and centring of several secrecy subjects that help to reproduce the logic of the GWoT and the hierarchies of gender, race, and sex within and beyond special operator communities ('insider', 'stealthy', 'quiet', and 'alluring' subjects) as essential to the security discourse of the US 'shadow war'.

In January 2002, images of the detention of prisoners held at US Naval StationGuantanamo Bay as part of the Global War on Terrorism were released by the US Department of Defense, a public relations move that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldlater referred to as 'probably unfortunate'. These images, widely reproduced in the media,quickly came to symbolise the facility and the practices at work there. Nine years on, theimages of orange-clad 'detainees' – the 'orange series' – remain a powerful symbol of USmilitary practices and play a significant role in the resistance to the site. However, as thesite has evolved, so too has its visual representation. Official images of these new facilitiesnot only document this evolution but work to constitute, through a careful (re)framing(literal and figurative), a new (re)presentation of the site, and therefore the identities of thoseinvolved. The new series of images not only (re)inscribes the identities of detainees asdangerous but, more importantly, work to constitute the US State as humane and modern.These images are part of a broader effort by the US administration to resituate its image,and remind us, as IR scholars, to look at the diverse set of practices (beyond simply spokenlanguage) to understand the complexity of international politics.

Joint Task Force (JTF) Guantánamo, the high-profile US military detention and inter- rogation operation, was established in January 2002 to house the 'worst of the worst' of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It nevertheless became a public spectacle that was essen- tial for constituting the reality of a Global War on Terror. Through evolving media and VIP tours of the facilities coupled with the Bush administration's military analyst programme (a system of reverse embeds used to promote Pentagon messages within the U.S. media), Guantánamo became a simulation essential for producing the real- ity of the war. It became a key way to convince the public that the war was real and necessary, but also that its conduct was just and humane, and therefore, by exten- sion, that the United States can be understood as 'good'. Through a triple screen of the tours, the visitors and their mediation, the telegenic spectacle of Guantánamo was transmuted into a reality of Guantánamo as 'safe, humane, legal and transparent'. The importance of this for producing understandings of the Global War on Terrorism (GWoT) bears closer examination. Without this triple screen, Guantánamo does not exist.

Abstract
In contrast to a view of secrecy as a tool of statecraft, where the game of 'covering/uncovering' dominates as the central way of interpreting secrecy's power, we set out 'secrecy games' as an approach for understanding secrecy's power and influence. To do so, we offer a set of three games to illustrate the more varied ways that secrecy operates and draw attention to the ways in which non-state actors use secrecy and shape its effects. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (1) the secrecy games of tunnelling in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the role of mobility as part of secrecy; (2) the secrecy game of camouflage and how stowaways blend in to facilitate access to global shipping routes; and (3) the secrecy game of maze-running and maze-making within urban warfare. Drawing these together, we show how secrecy involves a wider set of actors, practices, and associated knowledge-(un)making strategies than currently understood within International Relations. In turn, this expanded understanding of secrecy helps to make sense of the more complex ways in which secrecy is presented, used, resisted, and transformed – including and especially as a force that limits sovereign power – and, therefore, as central to what shapes global politics.