Federal agencies making scant progress in declassifying backlog

Two years after President Barack Obama ordered government agencies to come up to speed on declassifying 400 million pages of old records, there has been little progress. The failure to make more progress is a sign that the secrecy system considers itself immune from presidential orders, writes Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News. -db From a [...]

Commission unveils war fraud, seals records for 20 years

After uncovering $60 billion in contractor waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Commission on Wartime Contracting buried its internal records for 20 years. The Commission did release 8 reports and publish recommendations to avoid waste and fraud, but the decision to block access to the internal records and source material prevents the public [...]

National Archives sitting on 9/11 Commission records

Although the 9/11 Commission ordered that their investigative records of al Qaeda’s attack on the United States should be opened to the public in 2009, the National Archives has not yet released the vast majority of the information. John Berger, an author who maintains a website with 9/11-related documents, said to withhold the information is [...]

National Archives challenges CIA on destruction of tapes of brutal interrogations

The National Archives and Records Administration said they plan to investigate whether the CIA’s destruction of tapes showing brutal interrogations of terror suspects constituted improper destruction of federal records. -db NBC News November 10, 2010 By Michael Isikoff The legal inquiries into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes showing the brutal interrogation of terror suspects may [...]

Conservative group sues for Clinton tapes of talks with historian friend

The Judicial Watch has sued the National Archive to obtain tapes of conversations between then-President Bill Clinton and historian Taylor Branch. -db The Washington Post October 28, 2010 By Spencer S. Hsu A conservative watchdog group has filed a lawsuit claiming that 79 recorded conversations between then-President Bill Clinton and his friend and historian Taylor [...]

Federal archivist calls for reform on declassification policy and procedure

According to Michael J. Kurtz, Assistant Archivist at the National Archives, the backlog of records awaiting declassification will continue to grow until classification policies are changed. -db Secrecy News American Federation of Scientists Opinion February 22, 2010 By Steven Aftergood Executive branch agencies have spent more than a billion dollars on declassification of government records [...]