-Caveat Lector-
CIA Declassified 3,000,000 Pages in 1999
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has shipped three million pages of
declassified records to the National Archives -- which will make them public
-- including documents on the Vietnam War, Cuba, China and Taiwan and
photographs of the Soviet Union, the intelligence agency said Tuesday.
The number of pages declassified was triple the one million sent to the
National Archives last year under President Clinton's executive order
requiring government agencies to review for possible declassification all
historically valuable records that are 25 years old or older, the CIA said.
"During the last week of September, 2,000 boxes containing the three million
pages of releasable documents...were transferred in three tractor-trailer
trucks" to the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland, the
CIA said in a statement.
The documents will be made available to the public after the Archives
finishes processing and cataloging them.
"CIA's 1999 review included substantial collections of foreign document
translations and original negatives from CIA's holdings of worldwide ground
photography," the agency said. Also included were intelligence reports,
memos and reports from CIA operatives.
Separately, efforts are underway in Congress to change the process for
handling special requests from Congress or the White House for
declassification of national security records.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, and
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, have teamed up on
legislation that would create a board to handle special declassification
requests and order reviews of documents considered historically significant.
The legislation was expected to be introduced in Congress this month,
congressional staffers said.
"As a former (CIA) case officer, I am aware of some of the extraordinary
stories in the files at Langley," Goss said in a statement. "I would like to
see more of this history available to the American public."
The board would have nine members appointed by the president, and could
include archivists, historians, international lawyers and national security
experts. Goss has said he hopes Moynihan, who is leaving the Senate after
next year, would chair it.
The board would look at special requests from members of Congress or the
White House for declassification of documents related to a particular issue
and determine whether there had been similar previous requests or a new
review should be conducted, congressional staffers said. The aim is to cut
down the expense and time spent in handling redundant requests, the staffers
said.
The legislation would also allow the new board to order an agency to review
for declassification documents considered of permanent historical value to
the public.
"This is a democracy, this is our history and people have a right to know
it," one staffer said.
Steven Aftergood, director of a Federation of American Scientists project on
government secrecy, said the legislation was "not ambitious enough" because
the board would not be able to declassify anything on its own, leaving the
agencies with the final say over what could be declassified.
Copyright 1999 Reuters . All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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