After investigating the state of the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives in College Park Maryland, I have first-hand knowledge that Bill Burr is right. The American people are systematically denied access to their history, thanks to official secrecy.
Burr, analyst for the non-profit National Security Archive at the George Washington University, writes:
the U.S. government’s system for declassifying and processing historical records has reached a state of crisis. Congress has failed to adequately fund the parts of the government charged with processing records, resulting in understaffed offices and years-long backlogs. At the same time, some agencies responsible for declassifying documents have deliberately dragged their feet and erred on the side of needless secrecy.
This is not just a matter of history but self government, he notes.
Without declassification, the American hand in the coups in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 would have remained hidden, and Americans would have no way of understanding their country’s Third World meddling. The exposure, through declassification, of the CIA’s assassination plotting in the late 1950s and early 1960s produced public pressure that resulted in executive orders banning political assassinations. Declassified documents brought to light the intelligence failures during 1962 that delayed the detection of Soviet missile deployments in Cuba.
The bitterest political conflicts of today–the impeachment of the president, the investigation of his aides, the role of Russian intelligence–all turn on classified information. Without a systematic and robust system of declassification, self-government is impossible. To put it another way, official secrecy contributes to the current crisis of the U.S. government.
Burr makes this key point about the official records.
For every secret revealed, however, untold numbers are still hidden away. Only by unsealing its archives can the United States live up to its ideals as an open society and learn from its past.
Source: The U.S. Government’s System for Declassifying Historical Documents Is in Crisis
