By Cliff Montgomery – June 2nd, 2011
A direct order from President Obama intended to declassify numerous federal records apparently is being ignored by the majority of executive branch agencies.
Obama in December 2009 issued an executive order intended to reform U.S. security declassification policy.
Firstly, it set tough regulations for a mandatory declassification of information. Agencies are to automatically declassify all records 25 year old, unless they are specifically exempted, “whether or not the records have been reviewed.”
Each agency also is to perform a Fundamental Classification Guidance Review, a mandatory study of its classification system. The agencies are to find and eliminate classification requirements they deem obsolete.
Further, all executive branch agencies were to release “implementing regulations” on this national declassification policy by December 2010. The regulations essentially explain how an agency plans to put this declassification process into action. But most agencies either have failed or apparently have refused to issue such a statement.
“As of March 15, 2011, only 19 of 41 agencies have issued their implementing regulations in final form,” states the latest yearly Report to the President from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO).
“Given that less than half of agencies have issued implementing regulations in the 15 months since the President issued the order […], it is clear that the means by which agencies modify and issue implementing regulations are not sufficient to accommodate changes in national security policy,” added the ISOO Report.
“ISOO sees this as the biggest impediment to implementing the reforms called for by the President and as a real threat to the efficient and effective implementation of the overall classification system.”
The lack of implementation on this executive order means that several agencies have not yet begun their Fundamental Classification Guidance Reviews, even though it–like the rest of the declassification process–is required by law.
The worst violator appears to be the Defense Department, which also happens to be the single largest classifying agency. The Pentagon did not comply with the order to issue implementing regulations. Defense did not request an extension – it did not file for a waiver. It simply ignored this direct order of the president.
No other president had set a clear deadline for adopting implementing regulations on declassification policy, as did Obama in his December 2009 memorandum. Thus most agencies clearly are failing or refusing to comply with a direct order from the president.
ISOO Acting Director William Cira admitted as much to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a government watchdog group. But, Cira told FAS, this should only be seen as a proof of out-of-date bureaucratic procedures.
“In a lot of agencies, especially the larger ones, the bureaucratic processes for publishing formal regulations tend to be quite difficult and time consuming,” he stated.
“This can be just as frustrating for those people in the agency that have drafted the regulation and are trying to get it through the approval process as it is for anyone outside the agency,” added Cira.
Yet the intelligence community has apparently ignored declassification orders before.
For instance, Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush each demanded that all classified records 25 year old “be automatically declassified” unless the data were specifically exempted. But agencies continually have refused to follow this direct presidential order.
On other fronts, the State Department regularly violates the Foreign Relations Act of 1991, which requires it to publish a “thorough, accurate, and reliable” record of American foreign policy “not more than 30 years after the events recorded.”
But that just doesn’t happen.
Though the Department’s “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) is intended to fulfill the agency’s publishing requirements, “no progress has been made toward bringing the [FRUS] series into compliance with the statutory requirement that volumes be published 30 years after the events they document,” stated the most recent annual study of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation.
Among other problems, “the CIA’s resistance to declassifying documents that are already in the public domain presents a severe challenge,” added the Committee.
And the CIA isn’t the only obstacle.
“The Departments of Defense, Energy, and Justice (including the FBI) have often been as [much to blame] if not more culpable than the CIA for the delays.”
All this leads one to ask, “Just who’s in charge here?”
