Thousands of papers secretly reclassified

February 21st, 2006 at 21:47 Björn Hallberg

American paranoia. Then again, some people still fight cold wars.

In a 7-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have removed from public access thousands of historical documents that had been available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Clinton.

I remember Chalmers Johnson pointing out in one of his books that when he worked as a civilian analyst and accessed relatively sensitive information, he was struck by how trite and unremarkable the material was. I guess that if people had too much insight they would not only find out what their bandit government does in their name, but also that the entire apparatus is a complete waste of tax dollars as well as time.

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