From the New York Times:
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secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians …
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy … 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was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives’ open shelves.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.”
Complete article (registration required).
Now…
should I be depressed?
http://lisnews.org/comments.pl?sid=14236&cid=23874
Closing the barn door
Isn’t this a bit like closing the barn door AFTER the horses have already run out? It WOULD be nice to know what, if any, criteria were being applied other than the seeming “fact” that these documents had already been released. AND, you can’t tell me that the head of NARA, the Archivist of the U.S. (Weinstein, right?) doesn’t know about this program. He may not be cleared for access, but he most likely knows what’s going on in his own shop.
The article said there had to be a better way of handling classified information. The purpose behind classification is ostensibly the interests of national security. So here’s a philosophical question: how secure can a nation-state be without an informed citizenry?
Re:Closing the barn door
but he most likely knows what’s going on in his own shop.
This article suggests Weinstein may not have a very good idea of how the NARA shop runs – and if he does, there’s certainly reason to suspect that the accessibility of public records is not something he values too
highly.
Ministry of Information
First they will erase the past. Then they will re-write history. And after the present generation passes, who will be able to refute them?
It is as if Orwell prescribed a course of action that is being followed today. We creep closer and closer to a 1984 dystopia.
And now for your cheerful thought of the day:
We are all part of a great venture: To extend the promise of freedom in our country, to renew the values that sustain our liberty, and to spread the peace that freedom brings. – George W. Bush, SOTU, 2005
See? We’re spreading peace. We’re extending freedom. Our liberty is being sustained. So of course the archives must be scrubbed.