[Infowarrior] - AP: 1M archived pages removed post-9/11

[Richard Forno]

AP: 1M archived pages removed post-9/11
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By Frank Bass and Randy Herschaft, Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-13-archives_N.htm

More than 1 million pages of historical government documents ‹ a stack
taller than the U.S. Capitol ‹ have been removed from public view since the
September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by the
Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old.

In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review
because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National
Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thorough
audit.

"We just felt we couldn't take the time and didn't always have the
expertise," said Steve Tilley, who oversaw the program. Archives officials
are still screening records, but the number of files pulled recently has
declined dramatically, he said.

The records administration began removing materials under its "records of
concern" program, launched in November 2001 after the Justice Department
instructed agencies to be more guarded in releasing government papers. The
agency has removed about 1.1 million pages, according to partially redacted
monthly progress reports reviewed by the AP. The reports were obtained under
the Freedom of Information Act.

The pulled records include the presumably dangerous, such as nearly half an
enormous database from the Federal Emergency Management Agency with
information about all federal facilities. But they also include the
presumably useless, such as part of a collection about the Lower Colorado
River Authority that includes 114-year-old papers.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Archives | Freedom of Information | National Archives
and Records Administration

About 80 cubic feet of naval facility plans and blueprints ‹ on microfilm,
about 200,000 pages ‹ were withdrawn since the agency said it didn't have
time to go through each individual document.

In all, archivists identified as many as 625 million pages that could have
been affected under the security program. In their haste to remove
potentially harmful documents from view, archives officials acknowledged
many records were withdrawn that should be available.

The public can still request to see parts of withdrawn documents under the
Freedom of Information Act and may in some cases be allowed to see whole
files that were removed.

The archives program comes less than one year after the records
administration came under fire for allowing public documents to be
reclassified as secret under a separate program.

After the September 2001 attacks, the records administration signed a secret
deal with the Pentagon and CIA to review and permit the removal of tens of
thousands of pages from public view that intelligence officials believed had
been declassified too hastily.

In the aftermath of disclosures about that program, archives officials
promised they would not enter into any more secret agreements with federal
agencies, would publicize withdrawals and would establish procedures for
reclassifying documents. A subsequent audit of the disputed program found
one of every three sampled documents should not have been reclassified.

The newer program, however, has been operated wholly by archives officials,
and its scope apparently dwarfs the removal of CIA and Pentagon records. In
a memo to employees, then-Archivist of the United States John Carlin said
the records of concern program would "reduce the risk of providing access to
materials that might support terrorists."

A later memo explained that "relatively current, accurate and detailed
information on a structure, organization or facility that is crucial to
protecting national defense, the country's infrastructure, symbolic
monuments and personal identity are records of concern."

The archives initially targeted six categories of documents for review, but
the list was expanded to include 10 categories in early 2002:

€ Plans, photos or maps of government facilities or other sensitive
infrastructure

€ Emergency action, civil defense and continuity of government information

€ Nuclear technology materials

€ Weapons technology information, including biological and chemical agents

€ Presidential protection records

€ Materials relating to intelligence gathering and studies

€ Studies on terrorism and counterterrorism

€ Information on natural resources, such as oil, uranium and water

€ Material that could be potentially useful to terrorists

€ Materials relating to the Middle East with information on potentially
current topics

The director of an online coalition for freedom of information issues,
Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, urged officials to create a
public registry of withdrawn documents. She said officials should work
toward releasing more than 400 million pages of backlogged files rather than
removing smaller numbers of papers.

"This is a questionable use of tax dollars," McDermott said.

Other researchers said the project, while well-intentioned, reinforces a
culture of secrecy that became more pronounced after the September 2001
terror attacks.

"You want government to be vigilant when it comes to security, but you also
want them to behave responsibly," said Steven Aftergood, who runs the
government secrecy project for the Washington-based Federation of American
Scientists. "You can't have a situation where secrecy becomes the default
mode."

Many of the removed records might be useful to terrorists, according to the
AP's review. Archivists removed records from the U.S. Surgeon General's
Preventive Medicine Division, which studied biological weapons created
between 1941 and 1947.

Other records withdrawn don't appear to be useful to terrorists. Archivists
removed information from a 1960 Bureau of Indian Affairs report on
enrollments in the Alaska's Tlingit and Haida tribes because it included
Social Security numbers, which could be used for identity theft.

A 1960 map of the Melton Hill Reservoir in east Tennessee ‹ now perhaps
best-known as a spring training site for collegiate rowing teams around the
eastern United States ‹ was removed from view, as were 1967 architectural
drawings for the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

In e-mails and memos obtained by the AP, archives employees made it clear
they were trying to minimize the number and scope of removals. In an
internal e-mail, the No. 2 Archives official expressed satisfaction at
finding fewer and fewer papers that should be removed. "All quiet on records
of concern front," wrote Lewis Bellardo. "Just the way we like it."

Archives officials generally have received passing marks from secrecy
experts who have been aware of the program, said Tom Blanton, director of
the National Security Archive, a George Washington University-based research
institute. But Blanton also said the effort appears to be a case of
misplaced priorities.

"Government's first instinct is to hide vulnerabilities, not to fix them,"
said Blanton. "And that doesn't make us safer."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
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