March 21, 2003U.S. Ready to Rescind Clinton Order on Government Secrets
The new policy is outlined in a draft executive order being circulated among federal agencies. A final version is expected to be adopted before April 17, when the last elements of the Clinton order would take effect, requiring automatic declassification of most documents 25 or more years old. Under the draft, such automatic declassification would be postponed until Dec. 31, 2006. Other provisions of Mr. Clinton's order, which was issued in 1995, are already in force. But major changes to them contemplated in the draft would treat all information obtained from foreign governments as subject to classification and end the requirement that agencies prepare plans for declassifying records. The new policy would also permit reclassification of documents that have already been made public, and give the Central Intelligence Agency special authority to resist decisions by an interagency panel that considers classification appeals, typically from researchers. Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the ground that the Bush order was not final. But William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, defended the proposal, saying it "comes as close to institutionalizing automatic declassification as possible." Historians and other critics of government secrecy had mixed reactions. Bruce Craig, director of the National Coalition for History, said of the draft, "In general it's far better than what many in the historical community had expected to see coming out of the Bush administration." He called it "more an edit than a substantial rewrite." Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said, "One might have expected a more aggressive, pro-secrecy policy than this draft." He said its strength was that it preserved both automatic declassification and the interagency appeals panel from the Clinton administration. "This draft does not shred the existing policy; it merely attenuates it somewhat," said Mr. Aftergood, who made the draft public last week in Secrecy News, his Internet publication. But Anna K. Nelson, an American University historian, was more critical, saying: "This is in context with the way this administration has done the whole bit on secrecy. They have left a skeletal process." The document does retain many central provisions of the Clinton directive, notably that "in no case shall information be classified in order to (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency or administrative error; (2) prevent embarrassment of a person, organization or agency; (3) restrain competition; or (4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security." Dr. Nelson, however, complained in particular about the deletion of the sentence in Mr. Clinton's order that said, "If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." She called that change "a clear fire bell in the night." Mr. Aftergood agreed, saying, "It signals a preference for secrecy." Mr. Leonard, who was appointed to his post by the national archivist with the approval of President Bush, took a different view. He said the Clinton administration had inserted that provision to overturn a Reagan administration policy that took the opposite tack, calling for classification in cases of doubt. He said the new deletion would mean that the order "doesn't say one way or the other — a change of tone more than anything else." The practical effect will be "nil," Mr. Leonard continued, because the draft order retains provisions urging agencies to see declassification's values, for instance the national progress that results from the free flow of information. Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, a group that publicizes government documents, also objected, though, particularly to the provision on information from foreign governments. It says, "The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to national security." The phrase "damage to national security" is defined in the order, and in law, as the basis for classifying documents as confidential, secret or top secret. Mr. Blanton said the language on foreign government information was too broad, and would extend even to information given the Department of Commerce or the Export-Import Bank. "Making all foreign government information presumptively classified," he said, "means we're lowering our openness standard to the lowest common denominator of our ostensible allies." A frequent critic of government secrecy, Mr. Blanton did praise the draft for retaining the concept of automatic declassification. The Clinton order required that documents generally be classified for no more than 10 years. But it allowed for periods up to 25 years in several specific circumstances, including those involving information on weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration's draft, on the other hand, does not require a specific reason for the 25-year standard, saying instead that it can be applied if the classifying authority determines that "the sensitivity of the information" demands it. Mr. Leonard, of the National Archives, said an important element of the draft was its retention of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, which decides appeals from decisions by agencies to classify or not to declassify documents. He said the panel had overruled agency decisions in about 70 percent of the cases brought before it. But the administration's draft gives the Central Intelligence Agency special standing. While other agencies can appeal to the president if they feel that panel decisions against them are wrong, the director of central intelligence would be permitted to block panel declassification orders unless the president overruled him. |
