Obama Mulling A New Classification Policy

By Adriel Bettelheim | March 24, 2009 2:18 PM | | Comments (0)

President Obama is said to be close to issuing a directive aimed at loosening the government's system for classifying national security information -- a sticky issue that puts his vows of openness and transparency on a collision course with homeland security efforts and intelligence gathering.

Earlier this month, the congressionally appointed Public Interest Declassification Board strongly urged Obama to address a backlog of 400 million pages of information housed at the National Archives and Records Administration that's inaccessible to the public.

The volume of classified records "produces extended delays, decisions that often fail to reflect a comprehensive understanding of an issue, and indiscriminate processing of records without regard for their historical significance," acting board chair Martin Faga wrote in a March 6 letter to Obama.

Groups that track government secrecy have complained that a 2003 executive order issued by President George W. Bush has contributed to overzealous classification of documents that were supposed to released with limited review after 25 years.

Bush's order -- which modified ground rules for classification first established by President Bill Clinton in 1995 -- granted officials such as the secretary of health and human services power to classify information as secret -- a move the administration at the time said reflected how the war on terror was subsuming domestic agencies into the national security apparatus.

Obama's order would rethink the classification system and presumably outline steps to resolving interagency disputes, encourage information-sharing and address how to archive the growing volume of digital records.

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