by The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the National Archives of the United States new declassification system. After the scandal earlier this year in which NARA removed documents secretly, the archivst is working hard to keep the system more open. It seems fewer documents have also been removed. Let’s see how long this keeps up. Read more about it from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required).
secrecy
Oops!
Ok, I promise I'll try not to write too much more on this topic, as it does seem to be dominating lately. However, according to a New York Times article, it seems that 1/3 of the items that were withdrawn and reclassified since 1999 from the National Archives in the Staes did not contain sensative material. The remaining 2/3 could technically be justified but often held old secrets that are known. It begs the question, why were they withdrawn then? I have no answer for you.
Pssst…
Well, I just can't seem to get away from secrecy issues, so much so in fact that I've created it as a new tag. I blame part of this on account of my government publications duties. Here's some more about the National Archives and the CIA (from the Chronicle Of Higher Education, may need a subscription). The archivist, who claims he only found out about the agreement recently, agrees with what I said in my previous post: such an agreement goes against everything they stand for. He has stated that he will not be entering any secret agreements in the future. Update: Here's a link for background info on NARA and MOUs. Be Spacific also has a good posting on the recent couple of secrecy issues at NARA.
Papers from Jack Anderson have been donated to George Washington University. Great, except that the FBI want to look at them first and take out any classified documents. According to CNN, his family has refused to let the FBI look through the papers.