Monday, 30 November 2009
Obama to Appoint New Secrecy Czar
Having spent the last 12 months celebrating his win in the November 2008 Presidential elections, it seems that War isn't the only ball Obama has dropped of late.
Back in 2003, Bush issued executive order 13292 which classified millions of documents and records that are at least 25 years old and that have been referred from one agency to another because they involve multiple agencies.
These documents are supposed to be automatically declassified at the end of this year, December 31st, 2009 to be exact. And that is where Obama comes in.
Development of a new executive order on classification of national security information is now proceeding at an accelerated pace in order to preempt a deadline that would require the declassification of millions of pages of historical records next month.
There is an incentive to complete the development of the executive order before December 31, 2009 because of a deadline for declassification of historical records that falls on that date.
The conundrum for Obama is that in order to meet this December deadline, several agencies would have to forgo a review of the affected historical records, which they are unwilling to do. And so it seems they will simply be excused from compliance. But in order to modify the deadline in the Bush order, it will be necessary to issue another executive order.
If the comprehensive new Obama order on classification policy (which would assign processing of such records to a National Declassification Center that does not yet exist along with the appointment of a new Secrecy Czar.) is not ready for release by December 31, then another stand-alone order would have to be issued, canceling or extending the looming deadline. And officials are reluctant to issue such an order since they say it would be awkward for the avowedly pro-openness Obama Administration to relax or annul a declassification requirement that was imposed by the ultra-secret Bush Administration.
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