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03/13/07
Sunshine Week 2007
Citing
terrorism, U.S. record keepers remove million papers from
sight
By FRANK BASS and RANDY HERSCHAFT
Associated Press Writers
More than 1 million pages of historical government documents
-- a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol -- have been removed
from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks,
according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Some
of the papers are more than a century old.
In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant
review because the government's central record-keeping agency,
the National Archives and Records Administration, did not
have time for a more thorough audit.
"We just felt we couldn't take the time and didn't always
have the expertise," said Steve Tilley, who oversaw the
program. Archives officials are still screening records, but
the number of files pulled recently has declined dramatically,
he said.
The records administration began removing materials under
its "records of concern" program, launched in November
2001 after the Justice Department instructed agencies to be
more guarded in releasing government papers. The agency has
removed about 1.1 million pages, according to partially redacted
monthly progress reports reviewed by the AP. The reports were
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The pulled records include the presumably dangerous, such
as nearly half an enormous database from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency with information about all federal facilities.
But they also include the presumably useless, such as part
of a collection about the Lower Colorado River Authority that
includes 114-year-old papers.
About 80 cubic feet of naval facility plans and blueprints
-- on microfilm, about 200,000 pages -- were withdrawn since
the agency said it didn't have time to go through each individual
document.
In all, archivists identified as many as 625 million pages
that could have been affected under the security program.
In their haste to remove potentially harmful documents from
view, archives officials acknowledged many records were withdrawn
that should be available.
The public can still request to see parts of withdrawn documents
under the Freedom of Information Act and may in some cases
be allowed to see whole files that were removed.
The archives program comes less than one year after the records
administration came under fire for allowing public documents
to be reclassified as secret under a separate program.
After the September 2001 attacks, the records administration
signed a secret deal with the Pentagon and CIA to review and
permit the removal of tens of thousands of pages from public
view that intelligence officials believed had been declassified
too hastily.
In the aftermath of disclosures about that program, archives
officials promised they would not enter into any more secret
agreements with federal agencies, would publicize withdrawals
and would establish procedures for reclassifying documents.
A subsequent audit of the disputed program found one of every
three sampled documents should not have been reclassified.
The newer program, however, has been operated wholly by archives
officials, and its scope apparently dwarfs the removal of
CIA and Pentagon records. In a memo to employees, then-Archivist
of the United States John Carlin said the records of concern
program would "reduce the risk of providing access to
materials that might support terrorists."
A later memo explained that "relatively current, accurate
and detailed information on a structure, organization or facility
that is crucial to protecting national defense, the country's
infrastructure, symbolic monuments and personal identity are
records of concern."
The archives initially targeted six categories of documents
for review, but the list was expanded to include 10 categories
in early 2002:
-- Plans, photos or maps of government facilities or other
sensitive infrastructure.
-- Emergency action, civil defense and continuity of government
information.
-- Nuclear technology materials.
-- Weapons technology information, including biological and
chemical agents.
-- Presidential protection records.
-- Materials relating to intelligence gathering and studies.
-- Studies on terrorism and counterterrorism.
-- Information on natural resources, such as oil, uranium
and water.
-- Material that could be potentially useful to terrorists.
-- Materials relating to the Middle East with information
on potentially current topics.
-- The director of an online coalition for freedom of information
issues, Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, urged
officials to create a public registry of withdrawn documents.
She said officials should work toward releasing more than
400 million pages of backlogged files rather than removing
smaller numbers of papers.
"This is a questionable use of tax dollars," McDermott
said.
Other researchers said the project, while well-intentioned,
reinforces a culture of secrecy that became more pronounced
after the September 2001 terror attacks.
"You want government to be vigilant when it comes to
security, but you also want them to behave responsibly,"
said Steven Aftergood, who runs the government secrecy project
for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.
"You can't have a situation where secrecy becomes the
default mode."
Many of the removed records might be useful to terrorists,
according to the AP's review. Archivists removed records from
the U.S. Surgeon General's Preventive Medicine Division, which
studied biological weapons created between 1941 and 1947.
Other records withdrawn don't appear to be useful to terrorists.
Archivists removed information from a 1960 Bureau of Indian
Affairs report on enrollments in the Alaska's Tlingit and
Haida tribes because it included Social Security numbers,
which could be used for identity theft.
A 1960 map of the Melton Hill Reservoir in east Tennessee
-- now perhaps best-known as a spring training site for collegiate
rowing teams around the eastern United States -- was removed
from view, as were 1967 architectural drawings for the Lyndon
B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
In e-mails and memos obtained by the AP, archives employees
made it clear they were trying to minimize the number and
scope of removals. In an internal e-mail, the No. 2 Archives
official expressed satisfaction at finding fewer and fewer
papers that should be removed. "All quiet on records
of concern front," wrote Lewis Bellardo. "Just the
way we like it."
Archives officials generally have received passing marks from
secrecy experts who have been aware of the program, said Tom
Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a George
Washington University-based research institute. But Blanton
also said the effort appears to be a case of misplaced priorities.
"Government's first instinct is to hide vulnerabilities,
not to fix them," said Blanton. "And that doesn't
make us safer."
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On the Net:
Sunshine Week, http://www.sunshineweek.org
National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/
Federation of American Scientists Government Secrecy Project,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/
National Archives and Records Administration, http://www.archives.gov/research/notices/access-and-terrorism.html
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