Archives Pledges to End Secret Agreements [... w/fed agencies.. CIA, etc]

[WePurrsevere]

Full article here:

The National Archives will no longer enter into secret agreements with federal agencies that want to withdraw records from public access on Archives shelves and will do more to disclose when documents are removed for national security reasons.

<snip>

Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United States, announced the policy change yesterday after the release of a second secret classified memorandum, this one between the CIA and the Archives. In it Archives officials agreed in 2001 to conceal official CIA efforts to withdraw thousands of historical documents from the Archives, even though the records had been declassified.

<snip>

Independent historian Matthew M. Aid uncovered the reclassification program last summer when his requests for formerly available documents were delayed or denied. In February, the Archives acknowledged that about 9,500 records totaling more than 55,000 pages had been withdrawn and reclassified as secret since 1999.

<snip>

Nevertheless, the Archives' decision to shun secret agreements is a step forward, said Thomas S. Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library in Washington. "For the National Archives to go into cahoots with the CIA and Air Force to mislead researchers about what was going on was over the top, and a strong signal of a secrecy system that is genuinely broken," he said.

Apparently this started during Clinton because there was a concern about some documents being improperly released to the public that should not have been. BushCo then took it up to a new level of hiding declassified info from researchers and the public. :grr:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. I'd have to see something definitive that this practice started....

...under Clinton. If you'll recall, Clinton was responsible for releasing thousands of pages of previously classified information connected to the JFK assassination.

[WePurrsevere]

2. From what I read it doesn't sound like Clinton pulled records for any

dubious purpose. From what I understood the article to say was that the only reason Clinton did so at all was simply to rectify an error made in declassifying a few records that should not have been. This would be consistent with his track record of having a rather open style of government (as you mentioned).

OTOH it sounds like BushCo took it to a new level of secrecy in actually removing and reclassifying records that had been available to researchers and the public for a while. (Possibly removing things about his father's admin, etc?) This type of behavior is consisent with BushCo's track record of secrecy and downright paranoia.