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The legislation intended that the Foreign Relations of the United States "shall be a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions and significant United States diplomatic activity."

But it's routinely ignored, Aftergood reports, citing an advance copy he obtained of an official advisory committee's report to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

"Despite many and repeated assurances that this problem would be addressed by 2010, the committee is now very skeptical that the Office of the Historian will succeed in meeting the 30-year requirement for the Foreign Relations series at any time within the next decade," the State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation wrote in its new annual report.

Compliance with the 30 year deadline is not optional; it is a binding legal requirement. "The Secretary of State shall ensure that the FRUS series shall be published not more than 30 years after the events recorded," according to a statute enacted in 1991.

But instead of advancing towards that goal, FRUS seems to be retreating further and further away from it. The FRUS series' sparse publication record in 2007 "was a considerable disappointment, and does not bring with it much encouragement for the future," the committee wrote in its report to the Secretary of State.

"Last year the committee reported that 'it is reasonable' to be optimistic that the series would be in compliance with the law by the end of 2010," the committee noted. "We no longer have any reason to be optimistic, and are frankly very pessimistic."

The annual report, dated May 19, 2008, will appear in the September 2008 issue of Perspectives on History, a publication of the American Historical Association.

"The committee must really be concerned for the report to be so explicit and emphatic," one former State Department official told Secrecy News.