anybody who knows me knows that I'm an advocate
of opening as much archival material as possible in the shortest possible
time
but I'm reminded by a
colleague -- likewise an advocate -- that old outdated RD data to us --
can still, if opened, allow someone to build something we wouldn't want
built
now would we?
Allan Goodrich/Boston
Here are some revealing statistics from George S. Lardner's article,
"DOE Puts Declassification Into Reverse: Reviewers Combing Historic
Files at Archives for Data to Reclassify as Secret" in Saturday's
Washington Post (5/19/01). Lardner describes the extent to which
the Department of Energy and its contractors appear to have a veto over
the release of historic documents at the National Archives and Records
Administration. He tells how millions of pages of records are
being re-screened at NARA before release. Apparently, this will
go on for some time. According to Lardner, Joseph S. Mahaley,
director of Energy's Office of Security Affairs, says his contractors
have "'sampled' about 200 million pages of declassified documents
so far, 'surveyed' or taken a closer look at about 107 million, and set
aside about 30 million, or 15 percent, for page-by-page review. At
this point, he estimated, they have about 1.4 billion pages to go. He
said it would probably take five to seven more years of 'what I would
characterize as a fairly large effort and then we will be able to scale
it back.'"
What has been the result of all this review by DoE
and its contractors? Lardner writes that very little additional
restrictable information has been found among the millions of pages
re-reviewed. "In reports to Congress, officials at Energy say
they headed off the 'inadvertent release' of 22,500 pages containing a
smattering of RD or FRD data in the program's first year and the next
year found 40 pages, out of 52 million reviewed, that should not have
been declassified. Another report is expected shortly."
While no one disputes the need to protect national security
secrets, this does seem like an enormous amount of effort to uncover a
small amount of restrictable information. Maarja Krusten (Former
National Archives' Nixon Project archivist) Maarja@aol.com
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