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NARA Cooperated in Document ReclassificationA March 2002 Memorandum of Understanding between the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Air Force shows that archivists were concerned about an ongoing program to reclassify thousands of previously released documents but ultimately agreed to keep the operation secret.The memorandum, obtained by the Associated Press under a three-year-old FOIA request and released by NARA April 10, reveals that the agency agreed to mask the role of U.S. intelligence agencies in the program and to conceal the identities of the personnel who reviewed and removed the documents from publicly accessible shelves. U.S. Archivist Allen Weinstein, in a statement accompanying the memorandum’s release, said it was an “important first step in finding the balance between continuing to protect national security and protecting the right to know by the American public.” He announced that NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office would release an audit report on inappropriate reclassification before the end of April. The memorandum mentions two of the agencies involved in the reclassification program—the Air Force and the CIA—but the name of a third agency was removed. According to an April 12 Associated Press report, archives officials said NARA has no power to redact documents and that the name was removed by the Air Force for national security reasons. However, during congressional testimony in March, Matthew M. Aid, a historian working at the National Security Archive housed at George Washington University, said the third agency was the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. Although NARA and Defense Department officials acknowledged the existence of the memorandum at the hearing, Weinstein could only comment at the time that it was “classified.” In February, NARA acknowledged that some 9,500 documents had been withdrawn and reclassified as secret since 1999, many of them dating from the late 1940s and 1950s. Historian William Burr stated in an April 11 National Security Archive release that concern over references in some records to such secret aerial reconnaissance systems as the U-2 and balloon programs may have initially triggered the reclassification. Posted April 14, 2006. |
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