Yesterday’s news wires were talking about the imminent declassification of all classified documents over 25 years of age that will take place on Jan 1, 2007.
Second only to the actual facts of the story was the media writers babbling on and on about the Bush Administration NOT stoppping the declassification.
Who gives a rat’s ass why they didn’t and why is it news because they didn’t? It would be Page B-19 news if they DID do it, but though they didn’t the press still gives it hundreds of lines of print.
Oh, THAT Liberal media!
There’s a public law that deals with this, and it happens all the time. The various levels of classification are each supposed to have a declassification date with them, so that when a document is created and classified, the same stamp that classifies it, on it’s title page, gives a declassification date.
That’s not news.
What MIGHT be news is that there is a system of granting exceptions. If the release of a classified document would cause damage to the nation, in the opinion of the people who maintain it, it can be re-classified. This used to be done just by bumping it up a level, but since the military routinely did this for data on things like nuke weapons, etc, the exceptions were tightened up.
I’ve never heard of a law that blanket-declassifies ALL documents after 25 years. I’m fairly sure that this is either a misunderstanding by the writer of the article or a typo. I’m sure that what the writer meant was that on January first, some documents that have been classified 25 years will now be declassified, per the public law.
The media are always after the government to declassify documents, in their belief that there are important revelations in there. There occasionally are, but they are few and far between. One example I can think of is the “reign” of J. Edgar Hoover, longtime Director of the FBI. He managed to hide his flaming homosexual lifestyle in the classification system, and for a while, EVERYTHING that the Eff Bee Eye generated in the way of paper was classified. When I first started as a cop, it was impossible to get a file on even a common bank robber out of them. To do so, a civilian police agency had to cozy up to one of their agents and the agent had to take quite a chance with his/her career to provide documents.
Interesting that this story should come up just as Sandy Berger was “sentenced”, isn’t it?
They probably did not want it stopped so the “left” media would go hunting down other trails and give them a rest from from what the “left” media is supposed to do in the first place, which they have not done, which is to keep an eye on liars, thieves, murders and people like themselves who would subvert the constitution for thier own purposes.
Rivrdog,
It’s fact. As of 1 January, all documents 25 yrs or older, not reviewed and deemed unreleaseable will be declassified. Obviously, those of us in the “community” have been furiously reviewing documents and justifying classification for some time now, knowing 1 Jan was coming….