The CIA Is Closing the Office That Declassifies Historical Documents

Daniel_Stuckey writes "As a result of the sequester-induced budget cuts, the CIA is closing the Historical Collections Division office, which declassifies historical documents, and transferring the divisions responsibilities to the office that handles FOIA requests. The Historical Collections Division is described on its website as 'an important part of CIA's ongoing effort to be more open and to provide for more public accountability.' It is a 'voluntary declassification program that focuses on records of historical value,' including information on the Vietnam War, spy satellites, the Bay of Pigs and other historical scandals and operations."

Comments

It not about paper

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about sending a message.

Re:It not about paper

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Memory Hole" the new game, from Milton Bradley!

Look on the bright side. You now live in one of those cool, science fiction dystopias, that made things so interesting for your favorite protagonists.

Re:It not about paper

[erikkemperman]

Look on the bright side. You now live in one of those cool, science fiction dystopias, that made things so interesting for your favorite protagonists.

It didn't end too well for Winston Smith and Joseph K. But yeah, interesting times!

Re:It not about paper

[interkin3tic]

The message I'm getting is that they're doing something right now so reprehensible that they're worried we'll still be pissed about it in 30 years when it's declassified.

A lot of the shit we pulled decades ago with overthrowing foreign governments, which eventually came back to bite us in the ass, that angers me, but I'm not going to demand we jail Regan's administration and CIA officials from back then. Time heals a lot of wounds, and they know this. Why should it concern them if things from the JFK era are declassified? Perhaps it's because the clock is ticking down for some of the current government officials' earlier sins. Like maybe there's a memo that would otherwise be declassified in the next ten years from some underling typed up and put in the record that was the patriot act down to the punctuation, and a note that the next terrorist attack would be a good opportunity to slip it in?

Re:It not about paper

[Camael]

So much for greater transparency.

Re:It not about paper

[davester666]

"We are doing everything we can to be as transparent as we possibly can be.", Brick Wall said at a press conference today.

Re:It not about paper

[stenvar]

It's merely the lies that are becoming more transparent.

Typical

[TubeSteak]

CIA officials said they closed the Historical Collections Division to accommodate federal budget cuts that the White House and Congress proposed last year to create pressure for a deficit reduction deal. No deal materialized, so across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester were imposed.

The real problem isn't that they're rolling this into their FOIA office, it's that they'll undoubtedly not move the personnel too.
Institutional knowledge is incredibly important in any organization and even more so for a group that deals with history.

Not to mention the fact that FOIA requests are always backlogged, 30 day response requirements be damned.

Re:Typical

[Trepidity]

This is one way, at least, in which the politicians who always promise to "run government like a business" seem to be keeping their word. When budget cuts come in the private sector, the corporate history/archival department is among the first to get axed. Sure, 30 years later you might need those documents, but that's a problem for someone 30 years later to sort out.

Re:Typical

[The Grim Reefer]

Not to mention the fact that FOIA requests are always backlogged, 30 day response requirements be damned.

Well the Historical Collections Division is legally backlogged by at least 25 years. What's an extra 30 days? ;-)

Re:Typical

[dbIII]

Very true. There are eight boxes of nine track tape reels from 1991 next to a desk behind me because the client threw out their originals and we not asked to ship back the copies made for transport, so they ended up being left in the back of a shed. That's seismic data that cost a million or two to acquire back in the day and it would cost a lot more to do the survey again today.
That sort of thing happens one or two times a year (though most of the time it's just one or two tapes) and it's different clients each time. Some of it can be blamed on things lost in mergers but most of it is "tell the new kid to clean out the storeroom".

Most. Transparent. Administration. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I've got this nice bridge for sale, cheap.

No more disagreement.. among .. historians

[AHuxley]

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20121207/
In the 1980's a CIA staff historian wrote a secret history of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Thanks to FOIA, some of the work was released in the 1990's.
One final volume was locked up as the CIA "does not want to discourage disagreement among its historians."
Welcome to a world where the CIA knows that any basic history can "confuse the public".
Thanks to the sequester-induced budget cuts more US history can be kept safe with ever better long term document hygiene.

Re:No more disagreement.. among .. historians

[intermodal]

It's not the sequester that's at fault here. It's the way government agencies run their finances.

I like the way Thomas Sowell put it not too long ago, paraphrased: Let's say there was a government agency who had two purposes. First, to give life-saving medications and vaccines to children. Second, to build statues of Benedict Arnold. Cut the budget by 50%. What happens? The agency quits giving out the medications and vaccines. Why? Because it's a hell of a lot easier to get that funding restored.

That's what we're seeing here. The decisions about how and where to make cuts are being made politically rather than in a fiscally responsible fashion.

Expected bureaucractic response

[redelm]

Just what did anyone reasonably expect? That in response to budget cuts a bureaucracy would suddenly get religion and root out the fat & waste? Why?

That fat and waste has resisted previous cuts and is remarkably good at protecting itself. Spends all its energy at self-defense. Otherwise it would have been long gone.

Useful activities spend at least some of their efforts at delivering services so has less for self-defense. Besides, they probably think they're too important to cut. And they are -- so what better way to stop the cutting?

Transparent and accountable

[Anonymous Coward]

an important part of CIA's ongoing effort to be more open and to provide for more public accountability.

Too bad we can't mod TFA, Score:5, Funny.

Historical?

[Darinbob]

What are things that occured during my lifetime now being called "historical"? I'm not that old dammit!

Great...

[Hamsterdan]

Guess we'll never know who really killed Kennedy and Monroe

Re:Great...

[eyenot]

Or anything else the Clinton administration gave the CIA a deadline of ( what was it? 2014? 2019? 2029? I can't even remember ) to de-classify.

If they get rid of the department, will they still have to serve the Clinton administration's wishes?

I read that as...

[The RoboNerd]

"closing the [redacted] office, which declassifies [redacted]"

Re:Impeach Obummer. His hope and change sucks!

[CeasedCaring]

You're all wrong. Bush and Obama (and all who came before for at least 100 years) are just FIGUREHEADS!
The real power is not with elected officials at any level, but with the jobs-for-life civil servants.

For proof I direct your attention to the BBC docu-drama "Yes, Prime Minister!"

Run out of money ?

[Alain Williams]

I am not surprised, they have blown their budget spying on everyone; so they don't have any funds left to tell us what they have been up to. How convenient!

To the moon Alice! To the moon!

[TapeCutter]

What I think is sad is that so much recent culture has been locked up in corporate basements. Racist cartoons, the black and white mistrals, cowboys patronising indians, high ranking politicians ranting (to loud applause) on such topics as "keeping niggers separate" and "a woman's place is in the home". These were all standard fare on the TV between 4pm and 8pm when I was a child in the 60's. As a teenager I remember getting up early on new years day and I started watching the (Australian) draft pick for the military, my birthday came up and there was a sudden realisation that in 3yrs time "gooks" could be trying to set me on fire with napalm, for the first time politics was up close and personal, thankfully conscription and the war ended before I tuned 18. The vast majority of that material has been made taboo by anything that resembles mass media, but for some reason hard porn is now on tap everywhere, and the mass media are broadcasting soft porn 24X7.

Not that I mind porn, but it's probably the clearest social signal of how different the world is now to when most slashdotter's parents were growing up. At the time I hit puberty some women were out in the street setting fire to their bras. other equally angry mobs of women were out on the street in protest against such things as, a "lewd" statue of david replica in a craft shop window, the movies "Deep Throat", "Alvin Purple", and "The life of Brian".

I think if the taboo on this "culturally embarrassing" material was lifted rather than constantly reinforced by corporate group think, then maybe the 20-something "revolutionaries" here on slashdot would have a better appreciation of the liberties the civil right movement has won, if nothing else it would certainly add some perspective to the loud claims of "lost freedoms".

This is not to say that all the injustices in our society have gone away, they haven't and never will, but if "individual freedom" is the measure we're using, then the world is definitely a better place than it was when I found it 50+yrs ago, "pics and videos" do exists to back up my optimistic claims, it's just that "grandpa nobody" can't access them as easily as he can access (admittedly very amusing) cat videos.