Lifting the Lid

Carter sets new rules on secrets

For the 14th time since the Government started officially keeping secrets 60 years ago, the federal classification system has been modified. "The Government classifies too much information, classifies it too highly and for too long," declared President Carter last week in announcing that he had fulfilled a campaign promise by tightening the rules under which bureaucrats can wield CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET and TOP SECRET stamps.

Carter's 16-page Executive order replaces one issued in 1972 by Richard Nixon, and according to civil liberty experts represents a significant step toward defoliating the secrets jungle. The new policy:

> Takes away the power of eleven agencies that are not involved in diplomacy or national defense to classify any documents. Among those disfranchised: the departments of Labor, Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare.

> Requires that officials, if challenged, be able to explain to a new watchdog agency, the Information Security Oversight Office, or to a court the reason a document if not kept classified could harm national security.

> Allows only the sensitive passages in a document to be classified, rather than the entire document.

> Sets limits on the use of classifications higher than TOP SECRET. In the past, officials have put their most sensitive documents in these nameless cubbyholes, keeping them out of the public eye indefinitely. No one knows how many of them exist. But from now on, department heads will have to justify these ultrasecret classifications in writing to the Oversight Office. Unless renewed, they will expire in five years.

Civil liberties advocates were particularly pleased by the requirement that officials balance the public interest with the needs of national security when considering a request for the release of classified information. The effect of this provision will be to make appeals easier. Said American Civil Liberties Union Lawyer Mark Lynch: "This section is going to revolutionize litigation in the freedom-of-information field."

Carter's Executive order also speeds up the declassification of documents. Most now will become available to the public in six years, instead of up to ten years.

More sensitive documents will be declassified in 20 years, instead of 30 years. The National Archives estimates that as a result the number of once-classified federal documents that will be disgorged in the next decade will increase by 250 million pages, to a total of 600 million pages. Most of them, however, pertain to routine bureaucratic matters and will be of little interest to historians.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.