WASHINGTON - The government improperly sealed hundreds of previously public CIA, Pentagon and other records by reclassifying them as secret on questionable grounds, an internal review said Wednesday.
The National Archives' audit of thousands of records withdrawn from public view since 1995 contends that one of every three was resealed without justification.
The investigation covered historical records held by the National Archives. But it comes amid broader debate on classifying records on national security grounds, which critics say is often done based on political expediency.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that the National Archives agreed to seal previously public records — many of them more than 50 years old — despite concerns about whether it was justified.
On the other hand, Democrats have decried the timing of President Bush's 2003 decision to declassify sensitive intelligence and authorize its disclosure to rebut
Iraq war critics. In recent weeks, the CIA has fired an employee accused of sharing classified information with news media.
"The ability and authority to classify national security information is a critical tool at the disposal of the government and its leaders," said William Leonard, head of the Archives' information security oversight office, in a briefing with reporters.
Such a system, Leonard said, is only effective if the 3 million federal workers who decide whether to seal records on national security grounds each day follow clear standards and are kept honest.
I love it. Now this Leonard, who is the Archives' information security oversight, is now blaming federal workers for not following the proper guidelines in defining when to either classify a record, or to make such a record public--it is not the National Archives' fault.
But it gets better. Consider a few details here:
According to the audit:
_At least 32,315 publicly available records were reclassified since 1995, primarily by the U.S. Air Force (17,702), CIA (3,147) and Energy Department (2,164). Based on a sampling of 1,353 of those documents, 24 percent were resealed on clearly inappropriate grounds, while another 12 percent were questionable.
_Poor oversight by the agencies and the National Archives was to blame, primarily due to a lack of clear standards and protocol for reclassification.
_In many cases where a previously public document was resealed on national security grounds, the decision didn't make sense because the material had been published elsewhere.
One in three documents were resealed on inappropriate grounds, while another 12 percent of the sealed documents were questionable. That is a significant number of documents that were sealed in error. And what is more, once those documents become sealed, you can bet the will never be publicized again for another 50 years or so.
This story is not about national security, or keeping state secrets out of the hands of enemies. This story is about transparency. We have a Bush presidency that has become the most secretive in U.S. history. This is about a Bush White House propaganda machine, and force-feeding information to the American public without allowing any public oversight into their activities. Remember, Vice President's energy task force meetings and papers are still classified--we still don't know who Cheney met in those energy task force meetings. The less information the American public knows about what their government is doing, the greater the ability a Republican-controlled White House will have in political agendas using illegal means.
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