[Vision2020] Documents' Removal Concerns Lawmakers

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (March 5, 2006) Spokesman Review -

Apparently what the Bush ad-menstruation is saying is that the media cannot
discuss various topics and the American people should not have access to
declassified historical documents.

The American people have one right and one right ONLY; the right to obey.

"A congressional committee will look into a secret program under which
federal intelligence agencies have withdrawn thousands of historical
documents from public access at the National Archives, even though the
records had been declassified."

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Documents' removal concerns lawmakers
Secret program limiting access to archives documents

Christopher Lee 
Washington Post
March 5, 2006

WASHINGTON - A congressional committee will look into a secret program under
which federal intelligence agencies have withdrawn thousands of historical
documents from public access at the National Archives, even though the
records had been declassified.

"We are spending literally millions and millions of dollars to keep secrets
from ourselves," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the
Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and
international relations. "We've got a huge problem."
 
The panel plans to hold an oversight hearing March 14 on federal policies
for the handling of sensitive information. Shays said the suppression of
documents that pose no threat to national security is indicative of a larger
problem in which government secrecy is on the rise.

About 9,500 records totaling more than 55,000 pages have been withdrawn from
the public shelves and reclassified since 1999, according to the National
Archives. The New York Times reported last month that outside historians
discovered the practice and complained about it. Archivist Allen Weinstein
announced a moratorium on the reclassification efforts Thursday.

While the archives will not name the agencies involved, historians with the
National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library at George Washington
University, say the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence
Agency, Defense Department and Justice Department have participated.

Many of the records date to the 1940s and 1950s and their continued
disclosure would pose no conceivable security risk, said historians who
obtained copies of the records before reclassification. Such documents
include old Cold War intelligence analyses and studies of political affairs
in Mexico in the 1960s. Other documents appear to be the sort that should
not have been declassified, historians say.

Weinstein said he is suspending the agencies' efforts to withdraw documents
until the archives' Information Security Oversight Office completes an audit
of the removed material. Results of the audit, which will help determine
which records should be secret, are expected by late April.

"I felt that it was important to give people time to cool off in this whole
matter," Weinstein said Friday. "It's an effort to slow the trains down."

The program dates to the Clinton administration, when the CIA and other
agencies began recalling documents they believed were improperly released
under a 1995 executive order requiring declassification of many historical
records 25 years old and older. The pace of the removal picked up after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Some documents appear to have been withdrawn for no reason other than to
spare official embarrassment, historians said. One document - excerpts of an
Oct. 12, 1950, memo from the CIA director to President Harry S. Truman -
says that while Chinese intervention in the Korean War was possible, "a
consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a
Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950." The
Chinese invaded Korea on Nov. 26.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

********************************************

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"

- Thomas Jefferson

********************************************