Par for the course for this administration. (In fact, par for the course for this administration both on trying to conceal information, trying -- somewhat incompetently -- to conceal the fact that they were concealing information, and for the third or fourth revelation of administration misbehavior this week. Honestly, couldn't they space out the revelations of their stupidity any better than this?)
I am also seriously appalled by the actions of some of my fellow librarians and archivists
The National Archives helped keep secret a multi-year effort by the Air Force, the CIA and other federal agencies to withdraw thousands of historical documents from public access on Archives shelves, even though the records had been declassified. In a 2002 memorandum, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and released yesterday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University, Archives officials agreed to help pull the materials for possible reclassification and conceal the identities of anyone participating in the effort. The Associated Press reported yesterday that it had requested a copy of the memo three years ago.
"[I]t is in the interest of both [redacted agency name] and the National Archives and Records Administration to avoid the attention and researcher complaints that may arise from removing material that has already been available publicly from the open shelves for extended periods of time," the Archives memo read, in part....
Well, yes, I should think that NARA would want to avoid attention and researcher complaints and, oh yes, possible investigations by Congress into clearly unethical actions on the part of the administration and the national archives.
That said, this appears to be one of those programs that started out as a bad, and intentionally quite limited, idea from the Clinton administration that the Bush administration decided was a very good idea, because why would you want public information available to the public?
...Independent historian Matthew M. Aid uncovered the reclassification program last summer when his requests for documents formerly available at the Archives were delayed or denied. In February, the Archives acknowledged that about 9,500 records totaling more than 55,000 pages had been withdrawn and reclassified since 1999. The memo released yesterday says some records "may have been improperly marked as declassified" and their release "would harm the national security interests of the United States by revealing sensitive sources and methods of intelligence collection."
But historians who previously obtained copies of records have said many date to the 1940s and 1950s and pose no conceivable security risk. The program dates to the Clinton administration, when the CIA and other agencies began recalling documents they believed were improperly released under a 1995 executive order requiring declassification of many historical records 25 years old and older. The pace of the removal picked up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Although the Archives will not name the agencies involved, historians with the National Security Archive have said the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the Justice Department also have participated....
You know ... I can understand DIA and Defense wanting to yank documents. But what sorts of archived information could Justice have conceivably wanted to yank out of public view? Justice didn't historically classify that many documents prior to the Clinton administration and the advent of the FISA court, did they? And I can't imagine that FISA court documents are ever declassified; certainly they wouldn't have been declassified as yet.
Still. The librarians and archivists who lent themselves to this activity without public knowledge or protest should be deeply and sincerely ashamed of themselves. This type of unrestrained activity goes against everything our profession should stand for.
Posted by iain at April 12, 2006 11:09 AM
