![]() If the incoming administration is able to utilize the strength of the National Declassification Center to declassify all declassifiable material held by the Presidential Libraries, it will be an extremely beneficial accomplishment. Even worse, any document that has ever been deemed classified is not even reviewed during this process and the researcher must submit a second Mandatory Declassification Review request (which again usually takes years), before possibly having the ability to access this critical history (even then, if it has been censored by an overzealous redactor, the MDR appeal process, again, usually takes years). For a member of the public to even see what is in the Library’s boxes a researcher must submit a Freedom of Information Act request (which usually takes years to process). Declassifying documents held by the Presidential Libraries is the bureaucratic equivalent to passing a kidney stone. Once these inefficiencies are modified and the NDC is solidified as the government’s premier, most efficient declassification mechanism, it should expand to target not just classified documents accessioned to NARA but also those held by the Presidential Libraries. The PIDB has correctly called these malpractices as “wasteful, expensive,“ and “unsustainable.” Fortunately, the NDC has taken note and begun to remedy them. This is the only workable solution to the coming exponential avalanche of digital historic records. The NDC should also, once again, adhere to the principle of automatic declassification this principle, established in the current Executive Order but not practiced, requires documents to be declassified without a review when they reach a certain age. ![]() It must also stop allowing multiple re-reviews by multiple agencies of historic documents. But further improvements are needed for the NDC to achieve its mission of “releasing all we can, protecting what we must.” It must completely end its “pass fail” reviews where a single classified word in a document can cause it to “go to the back of the vault” and remain classified indefinitely. ![]() Its “indexing on demand” program serves as a quick and efficient mechanism for researchers to request and usually receive previously classified records. The NDC has eliminated much-though certainly not all -of the National Archives’ backlog of historic documents. The former head of the Information Security Oversight Office, responsible for oversight of the US classification system, has acknowledged that classification officials joke that “you could easily classify the ham sandwich.” Barack Obama has summarized the tension between the public’s right to know and the necessity for the government to keep some secrets as: “There’s classified, and then there’s classified.” Certainly, much work remains for the Public Interest Declassification Board to meet its goal of “modernizing the national security classification and declassification systems.” Here I suggest three achievable measures that the next Executive Order on Classification could take to reduce over-classification, improve declassification, and begin to rebuild the public’s trust that documents stamped as “secret” actually contain information that should be withheld from the public.įirst, the next Executive Order should further improve the efficiency of the National Declassification Center and expand its authority. For the Public Interest Declassification Board: ![]()
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