BBC: US 'reclassifying' public files

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US 'reclassifying' public files

 

US intelligence agencies have been removing thousands of historical

documents from public access, the New York Times has reported.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 pages began in

1999, the paper said.

 

At that time, the CIA and five other agencies reportedly objected to

what they saw as a " hasty release " of sensitive information.

 

The files include documents already published or obtained by

historians.

 

The New York Times said the reclassification programme accelerated

after President Bush took office and especially after the 9/11 attacks.

 

 

But because it runs in secrecy, it continued without being noticed

until December 2005.

 

According to the report, it was intelligence historian Matthew Aid who

noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been

withdrawn from the National Archives' open shelves.

 

Those are said to include decades-old State Department reports from the

Korean War and the early Cold War.

 

'Silly'

 

Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be

declassified after 25 years unless there is a particular reason to keep

them secret.

 

But some historians argued that the reclassification program is

removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security,

the New York Times said.

 

Mr Aid mentioned among the " innocuous " files removed a 1948 memorandum

on a CIA scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron

Curtain to drop propaganda leaflets.

 

Another reclassified document that Mr Aid had copied gives the CIA's

assessment on 12 October 1950 that Chinese intervention in the Korean

War was " not probable in 1950 " - two weeks before Chinese troops

crossed into Korea.

 

Another historian, William Burr, is quoted by the New York Times as

saying that he considered " silly " the reclassification of a dozen files

he obtained at the National Archives.

 

He mentioned a 1962 telegram from the then US ambassador to Yugoslavia

containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on

China's nuclear weapons program.

 

After Mr Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information

Security Oversight Office began an audit of the reclassification

program, according to the New York Times.

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4735570.stm

 

Published: 2006/02/21 13:28:58 GMT

 

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