You don't even have to work for the Federal Government to have an idea of how Americans feel about security - especially American corporate lawyers. I recently took a test as a prospective staff writer for a well-known language teaching company. Before I so much as registered for the test I had to sign a three-page confidentiality agreement invoking the most horrible legal punishments upon my own head if I ever so much as began to disclose anything about the teaching material that would be part of the test. And I know stories of cartoonists who were not allowed to show their work to their own wives and children for months, because they were working on adaptations of then-forthcoming movies.

Dan Brown is supposed to be American. At this point, I don't even know whether he knows his own country and countrymen.