I have read over again all of the postings on the reclassification fiasco, and I think that there is actually a surprising amount of agreement among the people who have spoken out on this. Everyone wants a strong, independent NARA that does good things - there is just some debate on the best way to get there. And I think that everyone feels that some stupid things have happened. No one should be reclassifying documents that have been published in the FRUS - and therefore making every library that owns a set technically in violation of the espionage laws. Fortunately, it wasn't NARA staff that made that asinine decision (though ISOO staff should have caught it). Everyone (including Allen Weinstein) is agreed as well there shouldn't be an MOU that is first, classified and second, one in which NARA agrees that it not only won't tell researchers about what it is doing, it won't even tell other NARA staff (possibly including the Archivist). It is an interesting question how such a thing occurred, and after we get the ISOO audit, we might have a better idea of what happened. Is the problem, for example, that political pressure was applied to a weak agency? Or was ISOO itself understaffed to such an extent that it could not properly monitor the reclassification effort as it said that it would do in its 2003 annual report? In addition to the list of issues that Bruce Montgomery provided, the big one I see coming down the road is a possible revision of Executive Order 13292 (which itself modified Executive Order 12958). Most commentators have noted that 13292 gave the VP the right to declassify documents (and maybe get Scooter Libby off the hook), but it also postponed automatic declassfication until 31 December 2006. Anyone care to guess whether an administration apparently addicted to secrecy will allow automatic declassification to resume? That, combined with the Kyl Amendment (which John Carlin testified would gut declassification at NARA), poses the biggest threat to openness. As I read the record, NARA under first John Carlin and now Allen Weinstein has become a friend of openness and an opponent of inappropriate government secrecy. It makes the existence of the classified MOU all the more bizarre. These are important issues, and unfortunately there are too few archivists who monitor them. We have relied too long on the expertise of Anne van Camp, David Wallace, Bruce Montgomery, and Richard Cox (to name a few) with regards to issues of secrecy and openness. I hope that other archivists can join them in developing for SAA proper archival responses to the challenges to openness that I know we will face in the future. Peter Peter B. Hirtle IRIS Technology Strategist and CUL Intellectual Property Officer Instruction, Research, and Information Services Division Cornell University Library 309 Uris Library Ithaca, NY 14853 [log in to unmask] 607/255-4033 (ph) 607/255-7922 (fax) A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org. For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>