Hayden Named to Public Interest Declass Board

[kpete]

Source: Secrecy News

Hayden Named to Public Interest Declass Board
September 10th, 2009 by Steven Aftergood

If one were searching for an individual to represent the public interest in promoting declassification of government records, the first name that came to mind would probably not be Michael V. Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. But improbable as it may seem, he is the latest appointee to the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), an official body that advises the President on declassification policies, priorities and potential reforms.

General Hayden’s appointment to the PIDB by Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was revealed in the September 8 Congressional Record.

A professional background in national security matters is of course not a disqualification for participation in classification policy debates (and several former intelligence community officials are already represented on the nine-member PIDB). In fact, such professionals often possess an unusually clear understanding of the specific failings of the classification system and of the urgency of correcting it. Few if any outside critics have developed a more severe critique of the classification system than J. William Leonard, for example, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, who has called for a ninety percent reduction in classification activity.

But General Hayden is not well known as a classification critic or a proponent of declassification. As NSA and CIA Director he was integral to the practice of classification in its latest and most decadent phase. When the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan conceived of a Public Interest Declassification Board a decade ago, he would not have imagined that the national security classification system might be employed by a present-day U.S. Administration to help circumvent laws against warrantless surveillance or torture. And yet here we are.

Read more: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/09/hayden_pidb.html

[unhappycamper]

1. Hayden should be in jail or at the Hauge.

Unfortunately we're looking forward, not backward.

[unhappycamper]

2. Hayden should be in jail or at the Hauge.

Unfortunately we're looking forward, not backward.