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Misdirection of classification resources at the CIA

Edited by John Prados

The CIA Research Tool (CREST), a database of declassified CIA material maintained at the National Archives (College Park) and several of the presidential libraries, is a valuable source for information on the CIA's analytical/reporting efforts over the years as well as some of the Agency's breakthroughs in photographic intelligence collection (U-2, Corona).   For much of the decade, researchers have been making productive use of the annual updates of CREST databases.  Nevertheless, a close look at material posted on CREST, in this instance, collections of the "Journal of the [CIA] Legislative Counsel" from the mid-1970s, raises questions about the arbitrary and capricious way that the Agency uses relatively scarce resources to protect supposedly sensitive information.  These examples, all of which are excerpted from the "Journals," show a capricious declassification process which, somehow, conducts duplicative reviews of the same documents on different days producing entirely different results.  In all of them, information that was declassified in the initial iteration would be vainly and probably unwittingly "reclassified" months or weeks later.  Some of the examples, such as differential treatment of classification markings, are small potatoes, but they make one wonder about the logic that drives declassification and classification decisions.  Other examples of differential treatment are more substantial but also involve routine information that should not have been classified in the first place.
    
The review process for these documents--scanning, reviewing, and excising--took considerable effort by the CIA staff, yet these examples are egregious and a waste of taxpayer resources.  Like the Pentagon documents discussed in today's posting, the CIA is treating 30 year old documents as if they were contemporary material.  This also points to the need for appropriate guidance for declassifying historical records.

 

Documents 1A-D:  Protecting Classification Markings
1A: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel," Wednesday – 23 April 1975, Confidential, Excised Copy of page 1, released December 2005
1B:  Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel," Wednesday – 23 April 1975, Confidential, complete copy of page 1, released November 2005
1C: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 6 May 1975, Confidential, page 3, excised copy with classification markings withheld, released January 2006
1D: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 6 May 1975, Confidential, page 3, excised copy with classification markings, released January 2006
The painstaking effort to protect classification status markings is evident.  In documents 1A-B, the reviewers pointlessly withheld information showing that each paragraph was "unclassified" to begin with.  In documents 1C-D, innocuous classification markings, such as "internal use only" were withheld in one of the variants.

Documents 2A-D: Protecting Innocuous Content
2A: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Monday, 12 May 1975, Confidential, page 5, excised copy withholding classification markings and contents of paragraph 23, released February 2006
2B: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Monday 12 May 1975, Confidential, page 5, excised copy showing classification markings and contents of paragraph 23, released January 2006
2C: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 20 May 1975, Confidential, page 3, excised copy withholding classification markings and contents of paragraphs 13 and 14, released September 2006
2D: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 20 May 1975, Confidential, page 3, excised copy showing classification markings and contents of paragraphs 13 and 14, released January 2006
In separate actions on documents 2A and B during 2006, CIA reviewers took away and then released the classification markings as well the content of a paragraph on the CIA reaction to the Church Committee's decision not to allow Agency lawyers to accompany witnesses.  Similar results obtained in the declassification review of documents 2C and D, where several paragraphs (withheld in 2C) involved routine transactions with Congressional staffers.  What national security interest is protected by withholding these paragraphs?

Documents 3A-B: Classifying Language of a Congressional Resolution
3A: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 17 June 1975, Confidential, page 2, excised copy withholding portion of content of paragraph 6, released December 2005
3B: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 17 June 1975, Confidential, page 2, excised copy releasing portion of content of paragraph 6, released November 2005
In document 3A, the CIA withheld information--a month after someone else declassified it in a separate decision--on two questions that were part of a Congressional resolution on the Mayaguez incident, Cambodia's seizure of a U.S. merchant ship.  Why the language of a Congressional resolution would need protection is anyone's guess.

Documents 4A-B:  Leak of the Glomar Explorer
4A: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 15 July 1975, Confidential, page 3 with content of paragraph 13 withheld, released in 2006
4B: Journal of Office of Legislative Counsel, Tuesday 15 July 1975, Confidential, page 3, with content of paragraph 13 declassified, released in 2005
The redaction here, made a year after the information was released, involves the CIA conceding the difficulty in bring a criminal indictment in the case of the leak of the Glomar Explorer, Howard Hughes' CIA-financed project to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine in the Pacific.  Again, the problem of the CIA's deficient classification standards is evident.

 

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