[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 36 (Wednesday, March 19, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E514]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page E514]]



                                SECRECY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 19, 1997

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert my Washington 
Report for Wednesday, March 19, 1997 into the Congressional Record.

                           Government Secrecy

       For many years during the Cold War, the United States took 
     extraordinary steps to restrict the access of American 
     citizens to national security information. By limiting 
     certain information only to government officials specially 
     cleared to see it, we tried to keep it out of the hands of 
     our adversaries. This system of protecting information helped 
     keep us more secure.
       But the end of the Cold War has given us an opportunity to 
     reassess the role and costs of government secrecy. Certainly 
     restricting access to military plans and weapon designs made 
     sense, but in many ways too much information was kept secret, 
     with even the menu for a dinner party hosted by a U.S. 
     official once classified. I have come to the view that it is 
     an urgent national priority to reform the government's 
     existing system of secrecy. We must bring the system for 
     classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national 
     security information into line with our view of American 
     democracy and the threats it faces in the post-Cold War 
     world.


                      secrecy in government today

       It is remarkable that Congress has never passed a law 
     specifically setting up the process governing secrecy. Since 
     1947, decisions on what information should be kept secret 
     have been governed entirely by presidential executive orders. 
     The President relies on his constitutional authority for 
     conducting foreign policy and protecting national security to 
     issue such orders, but there are no laws that tell the 
     President how to classify anything.
       Under the current system, tens of thousands of U.S. 
     officials are authorized to classify information. Every year 
     they stamp ``secret'' on several million new documents. 
     Warehouses now hold an astonishing 1.5 billion pages of 
     classified documents that are more than 25 years old, but 
     only a few hundred officials are assigned to review these 
     documents for declassification. The backlog of secret 
     documents grows year after year.


                     problems of excessive secrecy

       All of us recognize that in a dangerous world some secrecy 
     is vital to save lives, to protect national security, to 
     engage in effective diplomacy, and to bring criminals to 
     justice. But we should also understand the immense costs of 
     secrecy. Government agencies and private firms spend $5-6 
     billion annually to manage and protect classified material. 
     Reviewing older documents for declassification is time-
     consuming and expensive.
       Excessive secrecy cripples debate in a free society. 
     Policymakers are not fully informed and government is not 
     held accountable for its actions. Too often I have had the 
     impression that information has been made secret not to 
     protect national security, but to protect officials and their 
     policy decisions from public inquiry.
       Information and open debate are the lifeblood of democracy. 
     Surely one of the keys to a successful democracy is to assure 
     that the people are adequately informed about the issues of 
     the day. Openness and publicity may cause some inconvenience, 
     perhaps even some losses from time to time, but I believe 
     openness and accountability will greatly increase the chances 
     that we will avoid major mistakes.
       I also believe that a culture of secrecy threatens our 
     capacity to keep secrets that must be kept. As former Supreme 
     Court Justice Potter Stewart said, ``When everything is 
     classified then nothing is classified.'' If we have too much 
     secrecy, we cannot focus enough on protecting the truly 
     important secrets. Secrecy can best be preserved when the 
     credibility of the system is assured.


                          What should be done

       The key then is to strike an appropriate balance. We need 
     to reduce sharply the level of secrecy within our government 
     and make available to the American people millions of 
     documents that have been maintained in secrecy. On the other 
     hand, we want to safeguard better the information necessary 
     to protect our nation and our citizens, information that is 
     critical to the pursuit of our national security. Such a 
     classification system should protect our national security in 
     a reasonable and cost-effective manner.
       President Clinton has taken some useful steps to try to 
     reduce government secrecy. He shortened the number of years 
     that most documents may remain secret and gave agencies five 
     years to declassify most documents in their possession that 
     are older than 25 years. The President also ordered the 
     release of millions of World War II-era documents. 
     Unfortunately, there has been resistance to the 
     President's reforms. Some agencies have been slow to adopt 
     new classification procedures, and several are behind 
     schedule on meeting the five-year declassification target.
       During the past two years I have served on a twelve-member 
     commission on government secrecy made up of private citizens, 
     Executive Branch officials, and Members of Congress. The 
     commission concluded that current policies have encouraged 
     secrecy, and we made several recommendations to improve the 
     classification process.
       First, we need to pass a law establishing broad standards 
     for appropriate classification and declassification. A 
     statute would give the secrecy system greater stability and 
     inspire greater respect than the numerous presidential 
     executive orders issued since World War II. Second, we should 
     create a Declassification Center within the National 
     Archives. It would declassify documents under the guidance of 
     national security agencies, and should eventually be able to 
     declassify more documents, at a lower cost, than individual 
     agencies can today. Third, officials who classify documents 
     should be specially trained to weigh the benefits of public 
     access against the need to protect a particular piece of 
     information, and they should provide a written justification 
     when information is classified for the first time. Fourth, to 
     strengthen individual accountability, officials should be 
     required to identify themselves by name on the documents they 
     classify, and classification should be a regular part of job 
     performance evaluations. Finally, a single Executive Branch 
     agency should be put in charge of coordinating classification 
     policies governmentwide. This agency must have the authority 
     to demand compliance with Administration policies.


                               conclusion

       The Cold War has ended, and so has the justification for a 
     vast array of secrets whose very existence is contrary to 
     free and open government. It is time for a new way of 
     thinking about secrecy. The best way to ensure that secrecy 
     is respected is for secrecy to be returned to a limited but 
     necessary role. We will better protect necessary secrets, and 
     our democracy, if secrecy is reduced overall.

                          ____________________