WP: National Archives Pledges to End Secret Agreements

[DeepModem Mom]

Archives Pledges to End Secret Agreements
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2006; Page A04

The National Archives will no longer enter into secret agreements with federal agencies that want to withdraw records from public access on Archives shelves and will do more to disclose when documents are removed for national security reasons.

The new policy cannot guarantee full disclosure, however, because in some cases federal regulations limit the Archives' ability to reveal which agency is reviewing records and why, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Archives....

***

Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United States, announced the policy change yesterday after the release of a second secret classified memorandum, this one between the CIA and the Archives. In it Archives officials agreed in 2001 to conceal official CIA efforts to withdraw thousands of historical documents from the Archives, even though the records had been declassified.

The memo, similar to a 2002 agreement with the Air Force, spelled out procedures the CIA and Archives staff would follow in withdrawing records that the CIA believed may have been improperly declassified. In a background paper yesterday, Archives officials said they sought that agreement because a CIA and State Department review of 56 boxes in 1999 "resulted in a significant mishandling of the records, such that the order of the documents in many boxes was lost."

In return for stricter handling, however, the Archives agreed to help the CIA and the Air Force keep the public in the dark. That was a mistake, said Weinstein, who became the archivist in 2005....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041701295.html

[PSPS]

1. But if it's a secret, how will we know?

[gratuitous]

2. The CIA and State Department mess up the records

So the public is forbidden access. That makes a great deal of sense. :crazy:

[Jose Diablo]

3. Dean Wormer vows to end proclamations

that anyone has been placed on Double Secret Probation.

Thus, the DSP Program will continue, in secrecy, as the DSPP.

[JPZenger]

4. Covering up 50 year old mistakes

What is so strange about this whole matter is that it mainly involved covering up documents about 50 year old mistakes by US government agencies.

We could understand if the intelligence agencies decided that detailed current information about water supplies, nuclear power plants, dam construction, etc would be reclassified after 9-11 because there were new threats. However, these were mainly documents that were declassified during the Clinton Administration and were from the 1950s and 1960s, as I understand it.

One theory was that they felt a need to classify many documents to provide cover for the one document that they REALLY wanted to be re-classified.

[Jose Diablo]

5. If it comes out deep and how long

these intelligence spooks have been operating. The assassinations of political leader to further the agenda of profit for the wealthy using corporations as fronts. How the children have been used as soldiers to be strong arms for corporations and using drug cartels to make unauthorized money for the CIA. How the WWII Nazi's were welcomed and brought to our country to fight the 'cold war', just to keep the MIC in business.

If all this became public knowledge and believed by the public, it would be over, the end. Last one out, turn-off the lights.

Edit: As for "that one document" that needs to be covered-up, I wonder if it says "9/11" in the topic page or maybe it's the one about a certain up and coming 'war hero' GHWB that was the go-between to get money from a certain billionair in Texas and deliver it to a certain group of Cuba expatriots that had become an assassination team training just north of Lake Ponchatrain around say in late 1962 to mid 1963. You know, there is no 'Statute of Limitation' for murder.