Millions of pages to be declassified by Dec 31

people.howstuffworks.com...

Sorry if this has already been posted. I just found it on Slashdot.org

This New Year's Eve, at midnight on the dot, hundreds of millions of pages of U.S. government secrets will be revealed. Or at least they'll no longer be official secrets -- it may actually take months or more for the National Archives and Records Administration to make those pages available for public consumption. The NARA is already dealing with a multi-million page backlog.

But in theory if not in immediate practice, what was set in motion by the Clinton administration in 1995 is coming to fruition. Executive Order 12958 declared that in 2000, every classified document 25 years of age or older would be automatically declassified unless the classifying agency had already sought and received that document's exemption (anything that could cause an "identifiable" risk to national security, would violate a person's privacy or involves more than one agency is exempt). After two three-year extensions granted by the Bush administration in response to cries from the CIA, FBI, NSA and other agencies that they didn't have the manpower to review all of their papers in time, the final deadline has arrived. And President Bush is enforcing it.

Scholars of history, conspiracy theorists and freedom-of-information activists everywhere are doing a happy dance like none you've ever seen.

About damn time. I hope this stuff isn't going to be overly blacked out.

Why do I have the feeling that this treasure trove of information will largely go untapped because people are too lazy to care. It's always somebody else's job or somebody else's responsibility.

What do you think? Are you going to request some documents?

I can't cuz I'm not an American citizen.

If it was available to me I probably would.

[edit on 29-12-2006 by sardion2000]

What what what?! People outside the US won't be able to access these documents? I'm outraged... not really... I'm jealous that I don't get to see them

You'll be able to see them if they get posted to the web, you just can't file a Freedom of Information Request as a foreigner.

How about a demand/threat for information form? Do they have any of those to fill out? No? Hmph, you'd think by now they would have made viloent protests more beauracratic.

I cannot wait to read through some of this stuff online.
I can see alot of VERY interesting material coming to ATS in 2007. I eagerly await reading.

Yea this was posted somewhere else. I said it once and ill say it again. Sure there going to declasify these pages want to see an example of what glorious information your going to get with the declasification of these documents?




There you go a declassified UFO Document released by the CIA.

So what would you want to see?

There may be a number of regulations surrounding the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act), but I'm guessing anyone can view the files.

www.bvalphaserver.com...

John Greenewald is one of the most well known sources for documents.

So I'll ask... from what department and what documents would you request?

lets all waste are happy new beers for siting around reading on our holidays boring notes

Any updates on this? Personally I think this is just a stall tactic to delay total disclosure.

Where is the flood of revilations about all manor of topics? Someone had got to been itching to get their hands on these documents. Any links that someone could go to? Id love to start researching declassified things such as the CIA reports on the JFK assasination, or the real stuff about Roswell.

So any new developments? or is it just Status Quo?

well i hope they are able to learn more than under the uk 'freedom of information' act

hardly worth it

Here is a snippet from the article....

Any government agency that has classified documents is involved in the declassification process. Organizations that deal in secrets, like the FBI, CIA, NSA and Department of Defense are releasing the largest volumes of paper: The FBI alone will be declassifying 270 million pages. The NSA is declassifying at least 35 million.

So what can we expect to learn when these pages become accessible to the public? We're not talking about small secrets here. Experts says the documents will tell us about the inner workings of such events and periods as World War II; the Cold War; the McCarthy-era search for Communist sympathizers in the United States and the very real presence of Soviet spies in the U.S. government's upper ranks; the Cuban missile crisis; the Vietnam War and the government's anti-war-protestor activities including surveillance and penetration of activist groups; the CIA's secret experiments with '___'; the Camp David Accords that resulted in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt; the Iran hostage crisis in 1979; and the Soviet Union's attack on Afghanistan that same year.

So has anyone found anything interesting yet?

edit: links to websites where these can be found..

www.foia.ucia.gov...
www.archives.gov...
www.nsa.gov...


[edit on 7/20/07 by AcesInTheHole]

I personally think it's going to just wind up being a bunch of boring stuff everyone already knows, kind of like the CIA's "crown jewels".