Secrets piling up faster than government can declassify some

[Ichingcarpenter]

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — In the darkened stacks of a nondescript building in the suburbs outside Washington, dozens of federal employees wearing protective gloves spend day after day sifting through millions of pages of secret documents, some of them nearly a century old.

The 70 staffers of the National Declassification Center are charged with deciding – anonymously and quietly – which of the nation’s old secrets can be laid bare for the world to see.

They have a backlog of hundreds of millions of pages marked for possible declassification, and they’re able to release those that don’t reveal information about weapons of mass destruction, harm diplomatic relations or threaten the safety of the president of the United States. But no one believes they’ll be able to make a year-end deadline set by President Barack Obama. And in the meantime, the government is classifying even more secrets.

After three and half years, just 70 million pages have been released, including the Pentagon Papers and a World War I-era recipe for secret ink. Another 45 million pages have been kept classified. The rest have yet to be fully processed. (Because the material is more than 25 years old, it’s paper and not the disks, microfilm and emails that came later.)

“It’s not going to happen,” said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, and is an expert on – and prominent critic of – government secrecy. “That should be a signal to everyone that the system is broken. Not even the president can make it work.”

Meanwhile, the government can’t keep up with the ever-escalating onslaught of classified documents, which are accumulating faster than ever before because of the growing bureaucracy, switch to electronic data and a prevailing culture of secrecy.

Each day, federal agencies spend more time, money and effort classifying documents than declassifying them.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/19/194349/secrets-piling-up-faster-than.html#.UcJsjPnsZ80#storylink=cpy

[magellan]

1. Must be a fascinating job, though. n/t

[Sherman A1]

2. Indeed it must be.

I imagine it's also rather boring for the most part.

Would be cool to see the pages of old documents.

[intaglio]

3. Many, many moons ago, (1970 - 82)

I worked in a minor role for the British Library - the Library of the British Museum - in Western Manuscripts. The historical data was wonderful. Some documents were political, nominally private correspondence of politicians, but not officially material that went to the Public Records Office. Some of these were historically very interesting containing detail that never made it into the official record but were still under seal for 100 years.

One set of documents that passed through my hands was from a much older time period, General Wade's own copies of his correspondence including the time when he was overseeing Scotland from about 1724. One particular letter was wonderful as it discussed the arrest of a certain Mr Robert "Roy" MacGregor and urging his release as the said gentleman was one of the best spies the English had in Scotland!

[magellan]

4. Wow. I envy you!

Were you allowed to discuss any of the material you saw outside of work? I think that would be the hardest thing for me if not...but what I wouldn't give for a job like that.

(Sorry for any deleted double posts; my iPad has a mind of its own.)