WASHINGTON — President Obama declared on Tuesday that “no information may remain classified indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system for protecting classified national security information. In an executive order and an accompanying presidential memorandum to agency heads, Mr. Obama signaled that the government should try harder to make information public if possible, including by requiring agencies to regularly review what kinds of information they classify and to eliminate any obsolete secrecy requirements.
“Agency heads shall complete on a periodic basis a comprehensive review of the agency’s classification guidance, particularly classification guides, to ensure the guidance reflects current circumstances and to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and can be declassified,” Mr. Obama wrote in the order, released while he was vacationing in Hawaii. He also established a new National Declassification Center at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical documents by centralizing their review, rather than sending them in sequence to different agencies. He set a four-year deadline for processing a 400-million-page backlog of such records that includes archives related to military operations during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Moreover, Mr. Obama eliminated a rule put in place by former President George W. Bush in 2003 that allowed the leader of the intelligence community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information. Instead, spy agencies who object to such a decision will have to appeal to the president…
Which brings us to the Cheney Energy Task Force [National Energy Policy Development Group], initiated on January 29, 2001, eight days after the inauguration. Cheney met with the leaders of the oil, gas, and coal industry – but refused to release the proceedings. He fought releasing the proceedings all the way to the Supreme Court and won. All we really know about the Task Force is that the Energy Executives were there and that their maps showed the oil fields of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – all chopped up into areas for future exploration. This is just one of the pieces of evidence that the Invasion of Iraq was for oil, not WMDs or al Qaeda ties, because it way antedates 9/11. Will those records be released as part of Obama’s Executive Order? Let’s hope! The Republicans need an encounter with their own recent and checkered past.What I hope this order means is that Obama has finally had his fill of trying to deal with the Republicans by making nice. He’s tried it for nearly a year, and has gained nothing. This order could’ve been signed on January 22nd, 2009. I don’t know if he waited because he hoped for some Republican support, or whether he’s pathologically careful. I’m no judge of such things because I was ready for the secret documents to be released then. Whichever the case, I’d like to see the Cheney Energy Task Force proceedings heading our way soon.
Historians will have a feast of reading material.