U.S. reclassifies many documents in secret review

At the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing thousands of historical documents from public access.
The New York Times

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[markdoiron]

Back In The Day ...

Back in the day when I was serving in USAF, it was national policy that once a document had been publicly released it was forever unclassified. This was to prevent the potential nonsense of having the very situation described in the article where a legal holder of a document is unknowingly guilty of "compromising" the security of a document. I supposed that the President has the authority to change that, but what happens when someone decides to publish the contents of these "classified" documents on the web? I mean, you know someone is just waiting to do this just to show how silly this reclassification is. And to make you wonder about the other silliness in which this administration seems mired.

mark d.

[ajbright]

Or

if you wanted to arrest someone at a later date for espionage or releasing classified intelligence to the public, all you'd have to do is round up a couple hundred documents they've previously checked out of the library and re-classify them under the official secrets act.

That way if you wanted to demonize someone in the media, especially the cable news media that pretty much accepts anything its told on face value, you now have an ever increasing arsenal of classified documents that pretty much every intelligence historian or journalist with a bent on intelligence matters is bound to have in their archives or personal libraries.

[ajbright]

How about this for a paranoid conspiracy theory

Not the story, that's fairly amusing in certain respects but what about this.

If you were out to discredit someone, or needed some negative media coverage of a person you intended to indict, what about a charge of "releasing classified documents to <insert name here>".

All you would have to do is round up hundreds or even thousands of irrelevant and harmless documents previously unclassified, and if the person you were after was a intelligence historian, or someone known to peruse these archives, bingo.. several years later when this story has been forgotten you have an arsenal of largely harmless evidence.

Harmless as in the fact that no real crime as been committed, because this person would have released this information prior to it's re-classification, or even if it was released at a later date, you couldn't reasonably arrest them, but none the less officially your statement that they had released classified documents would be true.

Considering the competence of the average CNN reporter, you would be reasonably sure that when reciting the story they wouldn't bother with trivial matters such as the contents of those documents or the fact they weren't considered classified when the accused released the information. No that would destroy a good story or would require actual journalistic talent - something no network news reporter has any intention of garnering.

Personally I've seen things like this happen before, in the effort to demonize someone all the facts are carelessly forgotten, all the headline hitting stuff blatently overstated. Sensationalism is all that's required for a good story and decent ratings, the truth be dammed.

So if I was the person writing that story, I'd be a little more careful about revealing the contents of documents now considered national secrets, even if those documents were once de-classified and totally harmless in nature. Especially if you have any intention of writing material that could be considered political in nature and not very flattering of the current administration.

[Thomas, David]

Could It Be ...

Could it be that by removing ALL, previously declassified material, that enables people to deny the truth?

Declassified material, that is not a national security risk, serves only one thing ... the truth, or facts on which to derive a truth. By removing innocuous, and embarrassing information, these agencies remove a level of oversight. I can see why they would want this material removed, because of the nature to hide/deny the truth, and prevent reasonable debates over questionable activities. Unfortunately for us, it is those very activities why entities are at odds with us, and these de-classified materials provide the citizens of this country a clue as to why.

The social, and political climate in this country has enabled many of these agencies to get out of control, by becoming centralized, removing checks and balances, and justifying their actions (over and over and over again) based on a single attack. One which is wrought in controversy due to lack of action, based upon known information. The right approach was to get these agencies to cooperate, the wrong approach has been a new agency to try and coordinate these. These agencies are being told to act independently to re-classify material, not acting on their own anymore.

Remove the truth, you can deny it, rewrite history, and guide the minds of the populace based upon false information.

[Jonathan]

History is a terrorist tool...

Because god forbid people understand just how f-ed up this country is in regards to its past and present political motivated decisions that more would understand why leaving some countries along is a viable and respectable option. But that's terrorist talk so let not go there.
I wonder how many of the documents from King George the Thirds administration will be permanently sealed because it would make the US, and the people who voted for the moron, look even more like an idiot.