Congressional Record: March 19, 1997
Page E514
SECRECY
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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.
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