Now You See It, Now You Don’t—NARA’s Response to Reclassification: a Summary with Commentary

Bill Sleeman, University of Maryland School of Law, Thurgood Marshall Law Library

Article comments

34 DttP 37 (2006).

Abstract

In a New York Times article published in February 2006 journalist Scott Shane drew attention to a little-known document “reclassification" project then underway at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). While the reclassification program conducted by a number of military and civilian intelligence agencies began during the closing year of the Clinton administration, the program, like so many other changes in access to government information, had grown dramatically since 9/11. Responding the public and congressional pressure resulting from the news story Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, temporarily halted the program and called for a review of the various reclassifications. This piece, prepared as a column for the Government Document Roundtable of the American Library Association, examines the report and some of the issues surrounding the reclassification program.