Quick, call the FBI! Get a search warrant ASAP.
Put the Justice Department's best investigators and prosecutors on
the case. National Security has been compromised by another leak of
classified information.
And what vital secrets were leaked this time, you ask? Why,
appropriations for the Central Intelligence Agency … in
1953, 1954 and 1955.
It happened in the District of Columbia District Court recently in
a Freedom of Information Act suit. The files were clearly marked
"Secret" and "Security Information," yet they were exposed to the
whole world.
Actually, it was no accident. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists, the plaintiff in the FOIA suit, purposely made
the files public. He says he wanted "to demonstrate to the Court
that the CIA's classification policy on the matter is erroneous and
that historical intelligence budget information must be
released."
But the problem goes way beyond the spy agency. It includes a
bureaucratic culture of secrecy that has grown over the decades to
encompass the entire government. Experts across the political
spectrum agree that government keeps too much information
classified for much too long. And too much is unnecessarily
exempted from disclosure under the FOIA.
Two serious problems result. One, ironically, is that we wind up
with too little control of truly important national security
information. (Witness the recent disappearance of computer disks
containing sensitive data about America's nuclear weaponry.) When
too much information is classified, bureaucrats become
understandably confused about what constitutes truly sensitive
information and show less concern about safeguarding that
information. The second problem, of course, is that too much
information the public should see remains closed doors.
Over the years, federal bureaucrats in virtually every agency and
department have stamped countless millions of documents
"classified" or otherwise exempted them from public disclosure. Now
those documents remain locked away from public inspection, even
though there is no longer any reason for keeping them secret.
President Bush amended the executive order on classification last
year, directing federal agency heads to implement several reforms
designed to insure the classification system properly identifies
and processes what should and should not be kept out of the public
eye. Among other things, Bush stipulated that the classification
system is not to be used "to prevent or delay the release of
information that does not require protection in the interest of
national security."
Unfortunately, thanks to the bureaucratic inertia that fosters the
culture of secrecy, progress is hard to see. J. William Leonard,
director of the Information Security Oversight Office in
Washington, D.C. noted recently that senior government colleagues
"candidly acknowledge that the government classifies too
much."
The problem is so bad, Leonard said, that some agencies "have no
real idea how much information they generate is classified" and
"whether too much or too little information is classified and
whether for too long or too short a period of time."
Similar problems are seen on the FOIA side. A National Security
Archive survey last year looked at the 35 federal agencies that
handle 97 percent of all FOIA requests received in a typical year.
Among other things, NSA said, its survey "revealed a federal FOIA
system in extreme disarray. Agency contact information on the Web
was often inaccurate; response times largely failed to meet the
statutory standard; only a few agencies performed thorough searches
including e-mail and meeting notes; and the lack of central
accountability at the agencies resulted in lost requests and
inability to track progress."
These problems didn't start with the Bush White House and there is
no reason to think they will go away after November, regardless of
who wins the election.
Should anybody outside of Washington care? In 1966,
then-Congressman Donald Rumsfeld said the most vigorous opponents
of the proposed FOIA included executive branch bureaucrats with "a
vested interest in the machinery of their agencies and bureaus" who
resent "any attempt to oversee their activities either by the
public, the Congress or appointed department heads."
Now consider these facts: Every .31 seconds, the federal
government makes a credit-card purchase. Every .77 seconds, it
issues a contract worth $25,000 or less. Every 14 seconds, it signs
a contract worth more than $25,000. Few of the more than 33 million
annual purchases identified by the Procurement Executives Council
will ever be reviewed outside of government.
Clearly, the bureaucratic culture of secrecy has a lot to
hide.
Mark Tapscott is director of the Center for
Media and Public Policy at The Heritage
Foundation (heritage.org).
Distributed nationally on the Knight-Ridder Tribune wire