Opacity in Government
The current regime has long been considered the most secret in history. Apparently that attribute has filtered down to other parts of government, especially the intelligence agencies (of which there are many). Today's NY Times carries an article exposing the reclassifying of documents that were declassified years ago.
In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
...After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
If Mr. Leonard finds that documents are being wrongly reclassified, his office could not unilaterally release them. But as the chief adviser to the White House on classification, he could urge a reversal or a revision of the reclassification 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.
...the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.
Experts on government secrecy believe the C.I.A. and other spy agencies, not the White House, are the driving force behind the reclassification program. [Emphasis added]
The federal statutes regarding the classification of materials make it clear that the process is not to be used to cover up embarrassing incidents, but because the whole classification process is itself secret, there really is no oversight outside the intelligence agencies themselves and the president. We all know how much the Emperor loves a good secret, so this rush to reclassify old documents is no surprise, no matter how foolish it is.
The effect, of course, is that historians are now left holding some documents they can't use and are shut out of access to documents which by this time have no value beyond the historical. And the effect of that is the general American public is being deprived of its own history.
What's next? "We have always been at war with East Asia?"
In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
...After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
If Mr. Leonard finds that documents are being wrongly reclassified, his office could not unilaterally release them. But as the chief adviser to the White House on classification, he could urge a reversal or a revision of the reclassification 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.
...the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.
Experts on government secrecy believe the C.I.A. and other spy agencies, not the White House, are the driving force behind the reclassification program. [Emphasis added]
The federal statutes regarding the classification of materials make it clear that the process is not to be used to cover up embarrassing incidents, but because the whole classification process is itself secret, there really is no oversight outside the intelligence agencies themselves and the president. We all know how much the Emperor loves a good secret, so this rush to reclassify old documents is no surprise, no matter how foolish it is.
The effect, of course, is that historians are now left holding some documents they can't use and are shut out of access to documents which by this time have no value beyond the historical. And the effect of that is the general American public is being deprived of its own history.
What's next? "We have always been at war with East Asia?"
posted by Diane at 4:14 AM
1 Comments:
Opacity is formally defined as the measure of the impenetrability of opacity meter .... Most meters are calibrated to display either percent opacity or optical density values.
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