Re: U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:53:33 EST, Dude VanWinkle said:

> Is it national security if the current administration would be put in
> prison from the facts released?
>
> Such is the new age old question

More likely, the documents in question should have been classified all along,
and were merely put back to their proper status.

And it's hardly news - it's been a continuing saga well known over the
past few years to readers of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

> From a Secrecy News from Jan 15, 2002:

RECLASSIFYING DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

The question of whether documents, once declassified, can be or should
be reclassified has been asked on a number of occasions over the years,
and then answered in different ways.

Nuclear weapons information, once declassified, cannot be reclassified,
according to the Department of Energy's interpretation of Section 142 of
the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2162).  (DOE officials
sometimes finagle this restriction by withholding the declassified
information as Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information.)

Under President Reagan, officials were permitted to reclassify
declassified information and documents under certain conditions.  This
authority was exercised on numerous occasions, but these do not seem to
have been publicly reported.  See Section 1.6(c) and (d) of President
Reagan's Executive Order 12356:

     http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo12356.htm#reclass

President Clinton permitted reclassification of declassified information
only if it had not been officially released to the public. Once it was
officially released it could not then be reclassified.  See Section
1.8(c) and (d) of President Clinton's Executive Order 12958, which
remains in effect today:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/clinton/eo12958.html#reclass

A review of this executive order is now underway by the Bush
Administration and may include consideration of expanded authority to
reclassify declassified information.

FAS has urged that any such reclassification authority be narrowly
circumscribed and that agency proposals for reclassification actions be
subject to independent approval or rejection by the Interagency Security
Classification Appeals Panel.

> From Secrecy News, Jul 10, 2002:

INADVERTENT DISCLOSURES OF CLASSIFIED INFO

The Department of Energy yesterday published its latest quarterly
report to Congress on classified nuclear weapons information that has
been inadvertently disclosed through declassification of historical
records.

Out of approximately 2 million pages of publicly available
declassified records that were examined between November 2001 and
February 2002, DOE reviewers found 239 pages of classified
information.

The most common revelation was "nuclear weapon storage locations" from
several decades ago, information that is normally of minimal
sensitivity.  Other documents contained classified data on topics
such as "thermonuclear weapon design or function" and "interface
between nuclear weapon and delivery system."

An assessment of what damage, if any, might have resulted from the
disclosures was not made available.  The inadvertently disclosed
records were removed from public access.

See the "Sixth Report on Inadvertent Releases of Restricted Data and
Formerly Restricted Data under Executive Order 12958 (Deleted
Version)," dated February 2002 and released yesterday, here:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/inadvertent6.html

> From Secrecy News, Jun 6, 2003:

SECRECY OF HISTORICAL NUKE DEPOTS UNDER REVIEW

The continued classification of historical U.S. nuclear weapons
storage locations around the world will be reviewed by the
Department of Defense and other agencies, and may be revised
later this year, according to the Information Security Oversight
Office (ISOO).

The secrecy of these locations, which in many cases have long
since ceased to be operational, impedes the declassification of
historical records and accounts for the most frequent inadvertent
disclosures of nominally classified information.  Historians had
written to ISOO last year to urge reconsideration of this
category of secrecy.

In response, ISOO director J. William Leonard reported that the
Departments of Defense, State and Energy would address the
matter.  "Without committing to any specific change, all three
entities expressed a willingness to review certain aspects of
this issue," he wrote in an April 2 letter to historian Priscilla
McMillan:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2003/06/isoo040203.html

"I don't expect anything new on any internal DoD review until late
summer at the earliest," Mr. Leonard said this week.

> From Secrecy News, Dec 16, 2004:

CIA REMOVES RECORDS FROM NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The Central Intelligence Agency has been unilaterally removing
records from public collections in the National Archives,
according to the minutes of a September 2004 meeting of the State
Department Historical Advisory Committee that were approved for
release this week.

The Advisory Committee oversees the production of the official
State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United
States (FRUS).

A State Department official noted that "the practice of submitting
an entire FRUS manuscript to the CIA [for review] had resulted in
the reclassification of documents located at the National
Archives...."

"CIA reviewers... claimed the right to remove documents from the
open files that, in their view, had never been 'properly
declassified'."

The meeting minutes include a number of other notable historical
nuggets, such as:  "The CIA History staff will soon publish [sic]
a classified study on DCI John McCone."

A copy of the minutes of the September 2004 meeting of the State
Department Historical Advisory Committee is here:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/state/hac0904.html

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