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Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.
Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.
Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.
One reclassified document in Mr. Aid's files, for instance, gives the C.I.A.'s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was "not probable in 1950." Just two weeks later, on Oct. 27, some 300,000 Chinese troops crossed into Korea.
NYT : U.S Reclassifies Many Documents In Secret Review
Originally posted by LoganCale
It's good to have an alternate view, although I think the standards should be rather different when we're dealing with our public servants, as opposed to a private business' methods.
For many of these things there is no legitimate reason to be re-classifying them. They just seem to want to cover up old mistakes they made.
And stupider yet, these are mistakes that are well known now so what exactly is reclassifying them going to do? We can't talk about them now? Am I violating some law now by saying that the CIA falsely predicted China wouldn't take part in the Korean war? If so, then that is oppressive behavior on their part and needs to be overturned. And if not, then what good did re-classifying it do?
Originally posted by Rouschkateer
I think somehow, we still say by the People, but it has become voting as tradition, instead of really having control over bringing in the new President.
For many of these things there is no legitimate reason to be re-classifying them. They just seem to want to cover up old mistakes they made.
Honestly, if I had the chance to do that, I would.
Originally posted by LoganCale
They're human. They will make mistakes. That's understandable. But when they cover them up and don't admit their mistakes, that's just stupid and cowardly on their part.
Executive Order 13233, which restricts access to the records of former United States Presidents, was drafted by White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, and issued by President George W. Bush on November 1, 2001, shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Bush administration issued the order just as the National Archives was preparing to release a small portion of Presidential records from the Ronald Reagan administration, some of which might prove embarrassing to the President's father, George H. W. Bush, due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. Section 13 of EO 13233 revoked Executive Order 12667, of January 18, 1989.
Meredith Fuchs, general counsel for the National Security Archives, told The Daily Colonial that they first learned of the secret reclassification program when researcher Matthew Aid found examples of documents that had been pulled and reclassified.
Fuchs said that they then confronted the National Archives in Maryland, who told them of the secret reclassification program. The National Security Archives contacted the Information Security Oversight Office, who has begun an audit.
www.dailycolonial.com...
After complaints from historians, the National Archives on Thursday directed intelligence agencies to stop removing previously declassified historical documents from public access and urged them to return to the shelves as quickly as possible many of the records they had already pulled, the New York Times reports Friday.
rawstory.com...
According to the audit:
-At least 25,315 publicly available records were reclassified since 1995, primarily by the U.S. Air Force (17,702), CIA (3,147) and Energy Department (2,164). Based on a sampling of 1,353 of those documents, 24 percent were resealed on clearly inappropriate grounds, while another 12 percent were questionable.
-Poor oversight by the agencies and the National Archives was to blame, primarily due to a lack of clear standards and protocol for reclassification.
Two years later, NARA officials appeared frustrated by the reclassification effort.
"The amount of disruption to timely reference service wreaked by ... declassification (sic!) teams is growing," a NARA official said in an April 2005 report. "The Air Force team seems particularly bent on expanding their mandate to series of records well beyond recognized rationality considering the sort of information they are allegedly seeking to identify."