CIA and the National Archives
The NYT describes the extent of the CIA’s inability to deal with transparency – mainly as a form of applying old methods to a new problem –
…at the National Archives, documents have been disappearing since 1999 because intelligence officials have wanted them to. And under the terms of two disturbing agreements — with the C.I.A. and the Air Force — the National Archives has been allowing officials to reclassify declassified documents, which means removing them from the public eye. So far 55,000 pages, some of them from the 1950’s, have vanished. This not only violates the mission of the National Archives; it is also antithetical to the natural flow of information in an open society.
Exactly. While this particular effort has been stopped by the new director the damage may already have been done – the chances of convincing the CIA and the AF to declassify the reclassified documents ranges from slim to none. The doom loop is at play.
-Shlok
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