Aid discovered the program in December when he noticed that dozens of documents that he had examined at NARA’s College Park, Maryland, facility years ago have been withdrawn, even some published previously in the State Department’s historical series, Foreign Relations of the United States.
“The stuff they pulled should never have been removed,” Aid said in the February 21 New York Times. “Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous.”
Aid’s report notes that intelligence agencies have justified the program by claiming that many documents were inadvertently released after President Clinton’s 1995 Executive Order 12958, which resulted in the declassification of millions of pages of historically valuable records. However, Aid notes that many of the recently withdrawn documents “could easily be construed as embarrassing to the U.S. intelligence community,” although embarrassment is “not a subject matter covered under the various exemptions to E.O. 12958.”
On February 17, Aid and representatives of five historical associations wrote to J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, requesting an audit of the withdrawn documents, their return to the open shelves, and a new set of guidelines for the review of historical records.
Leonard agreed to the audit after reviewing 16 documents and concluding that none need remain secret. “If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I’m shocked and disappointed,” Leonard told the Times.
As chief adviser to the White House on reclassification, Leonard could urge a reversal or revision of the reclassification program. According to information provided by NARA, the multiagency reclassification effort is scheduled to continue at least through March 2007.
Posted February 24, 2006.