Tag Archives: Declassified documents

Secret Bush Administration Torture Memo Released Today In Response To ACLU Lawsuit (4/1/2008) American Civil Liberties Union. "A secret memo authored by the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserting that President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations to extract information from detainees was declassified today as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The memo, written by John Yoo, then a deputy at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), was sent to the Defense Department in March 2003."

• Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States, by John Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. March 14, 2003. Declassify under authority of Executive Order 1958 By Acting General Counsel, Department of Defense By Daniel 1. Dell'Orto, 31 March 2008.

News Stories:

• Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators "Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes" By Dan Eggen and Josh White Washington Post. Wednesday, April 2, 2008; Page A01.
• ’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations, By MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, April 2, 2008.
Continue reading →

Continue Reading →

Last year, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), an advisory committee established by Congress, issued a report to the President, Improving Declassification. (See also: Improving Declassification, 2008-01-13).

On March 17, 2008, the PIDB heard public comments on its report. For a report on those comments and links to many of the comments, see:

• PIDB Receives Public Comment on "Improving Declassification" Report National Coalition for History, March 19, 2008.

Among the comments were concerns that funding would ultimately be the biggest stumbling block to realizing the recommendations and that too many documents are classified in the first place, which contributes to the overload of the declassification system. Tom Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University suggested that the PIDB recommendations should be transformed into a draft executive order for immediate consideration by the incoming president. Mark Zaid, Executive Director of the James Madison Project encouraged the PIDB to pursue declassification of records of Congress, and classified judicial records.

Representing the American Historical Association (AHA), Dr. Brian Martin, President and Chief Operating Officer, of History Associates, Inc. noted that the value of audio, video and digital media value may increase over time and urged The National Archives (NARA) to avoid thinking that "if we have it on paper, we don't need to preserve it in another format."

Dr. Patrice McDermott, Director of Open-The-Government.Org many in the public interest community fear that electronic records, including historically significant records, are being lost or destroyed.

With regard to "sensitive but unclassified" documents, she expressed a need for a clear review process of these unlimited control markings, rather than linking them to declassification review after 25 years and treating them as "super-classified. As previous witnesses said, she agreed that much of the problem is caused by massive over-classification at the front end of the process

Continue reading →

Continue Reading →