WSJ News Exclusive | Biden Administration Weighs Changes to Classification of National Security Secrets Dustin Volz https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-weighs-changes-to-classification-of-national-security-secrets-11654779600
The review of the 2009 order includes an examination of how technological advancements have affected the classification process, said an official familiar with the matter. The official and other people familiar with the review didn’t say how far along it is or whether changes being weighed marked a substantial overhaul or minor adjustments. “We are actively evaluating the U.S. government’s policies on the classification of national security information, including what reforms might allow us to increase transparency while continuing to protect our national security,” a spokesman for the National Security Council said. He declined to elaborate on the extent of the review. The evaluation comes amid an expanding bipartisan effort in Congress for the federal government to modernize and streamline how it classifies national security information. That push is partly a recognition that an unsustainable amount of records—which has exploded alongside the growth of digital communication—is being locked away beyond public reach, according to lawmakers and officials. The effort also coincides with recent successes by the Biden administration to rapidly declassify sensitive information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the lead-up to and during the war. That new approach is credited by officials as preventing Russia from conducting certain operations, if not forestalling the invasion, and included modified guidance for the Pentagon and U.S. spy agencies on sharing intelligence data with the Ukrainian government, clearing bureaucratic roadblocks. Last month, Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) sent a private letter to President Biden urging him to empower the National Security Council with appropriate resources to achieve “long-overdue reform demands” to the classification system and to make clear to the executive branch that a new or amended executive order was an urgent priority. “The failures of the current obsolete system have been extensively documented,” the senators wrote in their letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We therefore urge that your administration make meaningful investments in automatic declassification and other modernizing technologies necessary to adapt the classification and declassification system to a digital environment.” The National Security Council didn’t comment on the letter from Congress but said it is engaging substantively with lawmakers and experts in the field. The National Security Council earlier this year rehired an expert in records access and management, Ellen Knight, partly to help oversee the review, said the official familiar with the matter. Ms. Knight, a career government official, had worked at the NSC but was reassigned to the National Archives and Records Administration in 2020. According to an account from her lawyer, Ms. Knight was reassigned after she resisted pressure from Trump White House lawyers to sign declarations that a book by John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser, unlawfully disclosed classified information. < - > https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-weighs-changes-to-classification-of-national-security-secrets-11654779600 -- Iw mailing list [email protected] http://sticklist.org/mailman/listinfo/iw_sticklist.org
