The secret is out: Drive to declassify federal documents failing miserably
Monday, February 25, 2008 5:33 AM PST
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E-mail this articleProponents of open government had high hopes for a federal panel established to chip away at the federal government's mountain of outdated secrets. The Public Interest Declassification Board was slow out of the gate, to be sure. Created in the final days of the Clinton administration, it wasn't funded until late 2005. But the panel represents the first organized resistance to a culture of secrecy that had become suffocating since 9/11.
After a little more than two years on the job, however, it's clear that this board is in way over its head. Last month, a joint presidential-congressional advisory group reported that the declassfication panel is lagging far behind the federal bureaucrats who are creating new classified documents.
It's hardly surprising. The six-member panel is woefully outmanned by the thousands of government officials with classification stamps, and the bureaucracy, from the White House on down, remains very much inclined toward secrecy. The watchdog group OpenTheGovernment.org reported in late 2006 that federal agencies were spending $134 creating and maintaining new secrets for each $1 spent to declassify old secrets. That's up from a $17-$1 ratio in 2000.
Worse, it was learned in the spring of 2006 that the CIA, Air Force and a number of other agencies had been busy since 2002 withdrawing thousands of declassified records from public shelves and reclassifying them secret. Among the estimated 10,000 documents removed from public view in that time are previously declassified documents dealing with the 1948 anti-American riots in Colombia, a 1962 telegram containing a translation of a Belgrade news article about China's nuclear capabilities and 1960 Cold War intelligence studies of political affairs in Mexico.
Why are these once-public documents worthy of classification. Our government says we cannot be trusted to know. The criteria for reclassification is classified. Welcome to the Orwellian world of post-9/11 secret-making.
The government's penchant for secrecy defies reason. And it may be dangerous. Members of the Sept. 11 Commission warned that excessive government secrecy adversely affects national security. The sheer volume of secrets, along with the many levels of classification and "need-to-know" safeguards, often render good intelligence useless.
Clearly, something more than the Public Interest Declassfication Board will be needed to hold back this tide. If this administration won't provide it, the next should.
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