Panel says government keeps too many secrets

Group recommends sweeping changes

March 4, 1997
Web posted at: 11:40 p.m. EST (0440 GMT)

From Correspondent Charles Bierbauer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's an old line among those who deal in secrecy: "I can tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

Now, a congressional commission on government secrecy says the government's fondness for intelligence, a legacy of the Cold War, is threatening the democratic process.

According to a report from the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, it's time for the government to reclassify information.

The commission, after a two-year review, urged that classification be kept to "an absolute minimum."

The report found that as a legacy of the Cold War far too much official information is unnecessarily stamped "secret" and then locked away for decades by government bureaucrats and functionaries.

About 2 million federal employees and 1 million people in industries working with the government have authority to keep documents and data secret.

Levels of secrecy

In 1995 alone, 21,871 federal documents were classified "top secret."

A few thousand documents might not seem like that much for a country with interests in so many other nations, but "top secret" is only one level of classification in the multi-tiered system, and not even the most commonly used one.

"Secret" documents are the most common, making up 71 percent of all classified information. "Confidential" is the lowest classification level.

Then, bureaucrats safeguard unclassified materials, too, with additional headings such as "official use only" or the more exclusive "limited official use," and the inviting "sensitive, but unclassified" -- peek if you must.

The number of top secret documents are exponentially increased when top secret information is cited in other reports. The "derivative" reports must be made "top secret" as well. In 1995, 374,244 reports became top secret by association.

Major changes proposed

Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, chairman of the 12-member commission, has been outspoken on the issue of government secrecy.

In an annual symposium on governmental reform Monday, the New Yorker said there are "no rules, too many rules, no laws and no way to tell how extensive" the group of classified documents is.

The commission proposes a new federal statute on how to classify documents -- there has never been one -- and a National Declassification Center to deal with billions of documents the public now dares not see.

The process of setting up such a center could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The study now goes to the Senate and House intelligence committees.

'We have gone overboard'

Lawmakers say the bureaucrats have gone overboard.

"Terry Anderson was held six years in a hole in Beirut. He tried to get Arab newspaper clippings from the U.S. government, and found they were classified. Knock it off!" Moynihan said.

Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, a commission member, said none of the panel's members "wants to make it more difficult for national security officials to carry out their responsibilities."

However, "We have gone overboard. We do not always carry out our responsibility to balance protecting national security secrets while making public as much information as we can."

White House officials caution that overhauling the secrecy rules could infringe on the constitutional rights of the commander-in-chief.

But President Clinton is supportive of the move. His 1995 executive order went farther than any toward declassifying old files, although intelligence agencies have dragged their feet on carrying out the order.

Forty years ago, the last Commission on Secrecy recommended censorship and wiretapping. Times and technology have changed.

Even though it recommends less secrecy, the commission now predicts an even greater need for security for something its predecessor could not anticipate: computers.

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