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

[Pirate Smile]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — 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secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.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.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."
"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/politics/21reclassify.html?hp&ex=1140498000&en=1490d91764a11aea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Flabbergasted]

1. At this rate the constitution will be classified shortly?

[mom cat]

6. Na. They will just keep shreading it!

[acmavm]

2. These bastards put the old Politburo to shame. Traitors each and every

one of them. Why doesn't anyone call them on this shit?

Our dem reps are just as bad letting them get away with it.

[bobthedrummer]

3. The National Archives were closed for "renovation" n/t

[LynnTheDem]

4. Through the looking glass and down the memory hole.

Whatcha HIDING, bush?

[Lars39]

5. I made the comment a few years ago that I could see them

replacing the actual Declaration of Independence.
It was a joke, now I'm not so sure the idjits wouldn't try it. :(

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Reminds me of how Turkey managed to buy a re-write of history

by bribing Hasteret. Maybe the Koreans are looking for a rewrite of their history?

[niallmac]

8. Ministry of Truth.

"rectifying" historical records and newspaper articles to make them conform to IngSoc's most recent pronouncements, thus making everything that the Party says true."

[punpirate]

9. Well, I see that the NYT is right on the ball...

... as usual. This story is now four years old:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/03/032502.html

[Marie26]

21. But at least they're writing about it now

The NY Times has really undergone a conversion in the last few months. Many of their stories have a subtext of "Can You See The Facism Yet, People?" It's like they've decided Bush really is out to hurt America & are trying to expose that any way they can. If that means writing about issues they should've seen years ago, so be it. At least they're seeing it now.

[Up2Late]

28. I'm not a big fan of the NYT, but I think the real question should be...

...what changed?

Why did the NYT suddenly pick this up, if they didn't pick it up 4 years ago?

Even the site you linked to didn't really answer that, but they did post a new story about it: <http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2006/02/022106.html>

<http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/>

[HuffleClaw]

10. revisionist history again?

i note they mention material at presidential libraries, i can bet WHICH presidential libraries are involved in this disgrace. and the article tries to blame CIA, when its the white house that has been crusading for more and more secrecy.

[Historic NY]

11. Thats simply great.............

for many years WWII maritime records were sealed as classified.....when I found they had been finally turned loose I jumped for joy as a great treasure trove had been opened. Turning back the clock does a great disservice to researchers and the general public alone...What a shame, I can see Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan rolling in his grave as he was the champion of opening up most of these documents.

[ClintonTyree]

12. Yet Cheney can unilaterally DECLASSIFY anything he wants....

at any times he wants as long as it serves his purpose for revenge. :wtf: Things are seriously screwed up in our nation's capital and a good place to start UNscrewing them would be at the top.

[Judi Lynn]

13. It should be worth taking a look later Tuesday at the National Security

Archives site, at least. From the article:

It doesn't make sense to create a category of documents that are classified but that everyone already has," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University. "These documents were on open shelves for years."

Reclassified The group plans to post Mr. Aid's reclassified documents and his account of the secret program on its Web site, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv, on Tuesday.
(snip)

This needs all the public attention possible. What a disgusting shock! Just when you think (hope) these creeps can't do any more damage.....

[Up2Late]

29. I posted some of it below, here's the link for you...

<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179/>

Let us know if you find anything interesting, I'm sure you will.

[passy]

14. Does anyone know of any Newspeak classes where I can sign up?

[tecelote]

15. The most secretive administration in American history...

...believes we, it's citizens, have no right to privacy.

The rewriting of history continues unopposed.

[sattahipdeep]

17. DeWine, R-Ohio OK warrantless domestic Spying

White House officials are discussing a proposal by Sen. Mike
DeWine, R-Ohio, that would more specifically OK warrantless
domestic surveillance, but give lawmakers more oversight.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5632011,00.html

Remember U.S. Ports....The whole discussion was conducted secretly.

There is little our elected representatives can do to stop it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x466808

[KnaveRupe]

16. I can think of at least two reasons for this:

"It doesn't make sense to create a category of documents that are classified but that everyone already has," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University. "These documents were on open shelves for years."

One: To act as chaff. Suppose there are 10 sensitive documents they want reclassified. By reclassifying 50,000 or so documents, they can create a smokescreen so that we don't know which 10 are the important ones that they ACTUALLY want reclassified.

Two: To criminalize historians. Suppose they decide that they need to relocate the nation's historians to those Halliburton-built internment camps. Now they will have a legal justification... those historians are illegally in possession of classified National Security documentats!

[druidity33]

20. you are a knave!

Number 2 is downright devious! But oh so important in order to maintain a fascist state. They've already taken on the scientists, professors and the librarians (though it looks as if the "Librarian Brigade" has won some battles)... why not the historians? (when will they get to the lawyers?)...

peace out...

[UpInArms]

18. kicking up for others to smell the stench of totalitarianism this a.m.

:kick:

[Lowell]

19. This is hysterical

now they are reclassifing stuff that has been out in the public domain for years. What are we supposed to do, forget what we already know. What a bunch of assclowns.

[sattahipdeep]

22. That eliminates the ability to refer to those items....

No support for what we say.

[Well_Seasoned]

23. This reclassification should never have been started in the first place ..

[EVDebs]

24. JFK assassination still needs some cover up...some old company men

are still out there on life support. BTW, Joan Mellen's book A Farewell To Justice, about the intelligence community sandbagging of the Garrison trial of Clay Shaw--the basis of Oliver Stone's flick JFK--is a great place to get more info on how they operate (and still do).

A Farewell to Justice
Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History

http://www.joanmellen.net/

""Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy’s murder...

Building upon Garrison’s effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies’ roles in both a president’s assassination and its cover-up, set in motion well before the actual events of November 22, 1963.

This book will become a landmark. As Mellen explains in the Preface, on the 40th Anniversary of President Kennedy's death in 2003, a Gallup Poll verified that twice as many people believed that the CIA was responsible for the assassination as believed that Oswald, a man without a motive, acted alone.""

[jwirr]

25. Sorry * it is too late to hide poppy & grampi's Nazi papers.

We have already seen them and I am sure they have also been copied.

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. Only now you can go to jail for talking about them.

And no, saying "it was declassified last year" will not be an excuse.

[Up2Late]

26. Declassification in Reverse (Secret Pentagon Reclassification Program)

(Just when you thought the Bush/Cheney drive to make everything secret had already reached the ridiculous, it just reached Ludicrous!)

Declassification in Reverse

The Pentagon and the U.S. Intelligence
Community's Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program

Edited by Matthew M. Aid

For more information contact:
Matthew Aid
William Burr
Meredith Fuchs
Thomas Blanton
202/994-7000

Posted - February 21, 2006

Washington, D.C., February 21, 2006 - The CIA and other federal agencies have secretly reclassified over 55,000 pages of records taken from the open shelves at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to a report published today on the World Wide Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Matthew Aid, author of the report and a visiting fellow at the Archive, discovered this secret program through his wide-ranging research in intelligence, military, and diplomatic records at NARA and found that the CIA and military agencies have reviewed millions of pages at an unknown cost to taxpayers in order to sequester documents from collections that had been open for years.

The briefing book that the Archive published today includes 50 year old documents that CIA had impounded at NARA but which have already been published in the State Department's historical series, Foreign Relations of the United States, or have been declassified elsewhere. These documents concern such innocuous matters as the State Department's map and foreign periodicals procurement programs on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community or the State Department's open source intelligence research efforts during 1948.

Other documents have apparently been sequestered because they were embarrassing, such as a complaint from the Director of Central Intelligence about the bad publicity the CIA was receiving from its failure to predict anti-American riots in Bogota, Colombia in 1948 or a report that the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community badly botched their estimates as to whether or not Communist China would intervene in the Korean War in the fall of 1950. It is difficult to imagine how the documents cited by Aid could cause any harm to U.S. national security.

To justify their reclassification program, officials at CIA and military agencies have argued that during the implementation of Executive Order 12958, President Clinton's program for bulk declassification of historical federal records, many sensitive intelligence-related documents that remained classified were inadvertently released at NARA, especially in State Department files. Even though researchers had been combing through and copying documents from those collections for years, CIA and other agencies compelled NARA to grant them access to the open files so they could reclassify documents. While this reclassification activity began late in the 1990s, its scope widened during the Bush administration, and it is scheduled to continue until 2007. The CIA has ignored arguments from NARA officials that some of the impounded documents have already been published.

(more at link below)

<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179/>

More ar this NPR link: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5227045>

[suffragette]

27. What are they going to do next?

Gouge out the eyes of people who have already seen the declassified/reclassified documents?
Erase people's memories? (Yeah, I know, they would if they could).

This is inane.

[Up2Late]

30. We need some more K&R's folks (Kick & Recommend)!!!

This one is important for all here to see!

[hang a left]

32. Update:National Archives halts reclassification of documents

National Archives halts reclassification of documents

RAW STORY
Published: March 2, 2006

Print This | Email This

After complaints from historians, the National Archives on Thursday directed intelligence agencies to stop removing previously declassified historical documents from public access and urged them to return to the shelves as quickly as possible many of the records they had already pulled, the New York Times reports Friday. Excerpts (full story when RSS-free moves):
#

Allen Weinstein, the nation's chief archivist, announced what he called a "moratorium" on reclassification of documents until an audit can be completed to determine which records should be secret.

A group of historians recently found that decades-old documents that they had photocopied years ago and that appeared to have little sensitivity had disappeared from the open files. They learned that in a program operated in secrecy since 1999, intelligence and defense agencies had removed more than 55,000 pages that agency officials believed had been wrongly declassified.
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Weinstein, who became archivist of the United States a year ago, said he knew "precious little" about the seven-year-old reclassification program before it was disclosed in The New York Times on Feb. 21.

He said he did not want to prejudge the results of the audit being conducted by the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees classification. But he said the archives' goal is to make sure government records that can safely be released are available. The audit was ordered by J. William Leonard, head of the oversight office, after he met with historians on Jan. 27.

snip>

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/National_Archives_halts_reclassification_of_documents_0302.html

[wordpix]

33. meanwhile, pundits & congressmen let all know about holes in port security

giving all kinds of details which I don't want to reprint here.

WTF?