Disaster for Researchers at US National Archives

[Harry Yeide]

For anybody who cares about the public's ability to get to the military records that tell us what happened during WW II, Allen Weinstein, the archivist, has just about made it unworkable for anybody who holds a job. Go here: Allen Weinstein Excludes Americans from National Archives. Thanks.

[Shmavis]

The Yeideman speaketh, that all may listen.

[NameUsedBefore]

Why?

[Dook]

Three reasons, from what I know:

1) The basement of the Archives 1 building in downtown DC was flooded this summer during a massive rainstorm and the repair costs have broken the Archives budget.

2)Weinstein is a political hack who, despite his academic credentials as a historian, does not appear to believe in free, public access to historical records. For his most well-known book on Soviet espionage in America, Weinstein's publisher paid a group of retired KGB agents a substantial sum (supposedly $100K) for exclusive access to KGB archives. Other researchers have had their access restricted as a result. Weinstein has also refused to make available to researchers the tapes of interviews he conducted for an earlier book after the accuracy of his accounts of those interviews was challenged.

3) Weinstein's attitude regarding public access to information reflects the current administration's belief that the public has no right to know and that it knows best what information should be made public.

As Harry says, the recent announcement of the change in the Archives' operating hours is nothing short of a disaster for historians and anybody who cares about America's past.

[MikeyD]

Don't forget this reason too:

4) the Rapture is coming, the current war in Iraq is supposed to set in motion the long awaited end-of-days. With history coming to an end what's the point of studying it?

The same logic also applies to global warming, endangered species, pollution, and helping the poor. Oddly doesn't seem to affect Congressional pay or CEO salaries.

[zmoney]

Maybe I don't get it but how is this going to keep anyone from looking at the records? It does say they will be open from 9-5 doesn't it?

Like I said I don't understand what the problem is so please explain it to me. I don't understand how them changing the office hours can be considered as some kind of way for them to keep our history silent.

Why isn't this stuff on the Internet?

[Harry Yeide]

Originally posted by zmoney:

Maybe I don't get it but how is this going to keep anyone from looking at the records? It does say they will be open from 9-5 doesn't it?

Like I said I don't understand what the problem is so please explain it to me. I don't understand how them changing the office hours can be considered as some kind of way for them to keep our history silent.

Why isn't this stuff on the Internet?

The changes do not prevent people from looking at records, but they make it substantially more difficult. Total access time is cut by some 25 percent, and people who cannot go during the 9-to-5 period lose more like 80 percent of their access. Within the remaining access times during regular 9-to-5 hours, the "pull" times when you can request records are cut by a third, and the first one is pushed until 10 AM. What this means is that you can get substantially less material on a given day, and that by the time documents actually reach the reading room (which is likely to take longer because volume will be greater for each pull), a researcher will have a little better than 5 hours to work with the documents. Picture what losing 30 to 80 percent of access to the records is going to do to research, which means books on great WW II things like (salivate) tank destroyers, and tank battalions (ooh, ooh), and mechanized cavalry, and....

As to why it is not on the net, the NARA page simply announces the changes. Nobody is paying attention to the issue yet.

[zmoney]

Harry Yeide, thanks for your explanation. Now I understand.

What were the hours before?

[Harry Yeide]

What's gone away is three evenings 5PM to 9PM per week, and Saturday 9-to-5. Now there are two evenings and one Saturday one week per month, plus the reduced number of requests for material. As I recall from their public posting a while back, 17 percent of NARA's user traffic came in on Saturdays.

[WindyCity]

Originally posted by Dook:

Three reasons, from what I know:

3) Weinstein's attitude regarding public access to information reflects the current administration's belief that the public has no right to know and that it knows best what information should be made public.

Left alert !

[SkulkingJackel]

Thanks for raising the warning. Now we can sleep better knowing you dedicated patriots are manning the watchtower.

[Bannon DC]

Originally posted by WindyCity:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Dook:

Three reasons, from what I know:

3) Weinstein's attitude regarding public access to information reflects the current administration's belief that the public has no right to know and that it knows best what information should be made public.

Left alert !

</font>

[Harry Yeide]

BannonDC: Thanks for the comment. Try not to spill your coffee when you hit the date blooper on p. 224. I can say from experience that government jobs have plusses and minuses, but I rationalize that every job does, except maybe Victoria's Secret photographer.

[zmoney]

Originally posted by Bannon DC:

He who controls the present controls the future.

I thought you were going to break into a Rage against the machine song.

Why are they reclassing documents that were previously released? What are they reclassing them to?

Whats the reason they decided to change the hours? I don't want to hear some conspiracy theory, I just want to know what the reasons given were.

[Michael Dorosh]

Big Deal, I say....the national archives are only good for those that can physically visit them. I have the same problem doing research in Canada - the local military museum work 10-4 during the week, and the national archives are a whole country away. Get the summer youth employment programs onto scanners, put everything into digital form, and give people access wherever in the country they are. This may be a step in the right direction. Millions of documents to scan may make the plan unworkable but you just know that at some point, it will have to be done if only to preserve these rotting pieces of paper in some fashion.

[von Lucke]

Information Security Oversight Office oversees the classification system and recorded a rise from 9 million classification actions in fiscal year 2001 to 16 million in fiscal year 2004.

Yet an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone unenumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases. Once freely available, a growing number of these sources are now barred to the public as "sensitive but unclassified" or "for official use only." Less of a goal-directed policy than a bureaucratic reflex, the widespread clampdown on formerly public information reflects a largely inarticulate concern about "security."

The Age of Missing Information

[Michael Dorosh]

But von Lucke, so what? Without context the stats are meaningless. You're in the middle of a war. Which docs were reclassified?

[zmoney]

Von Lucke, thanks for the response but I'm not looking for any conspiracy theory. I mean I clicked on the link you provided and on the right side of the page there were a list of conspiracy theories.

From what I've gathered the changes were due to some budget problems. Like I said before they need to just put this stuff on the web. Isn't there a website for the National Library? If so can you read their books online? Lastly wouldn't the National Library have most of the same stuff as the archives?

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

But von Lucke, so what? Without context the stats are meaningless. You're in the middle of a war. Which docs were reclassified?

If you read the article, they give several examples --- all but one of which (something about assembling a nuclear weapon, which should very probably have been classified to begin with), would fall under the heading of historical record, and not military secrets.

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by zmoney:

Von Lucke, thanks for the response but I'm not looking for any conspiracy theory. I mean I clicked on the link you provided and on the right side of the page there were a list of conspiracy theories.

Ummmm, I don't know which link you clicked on, but that article is posted on Slate --- a reputable on-line magazine with ties to Newsweek, MSNBC, and the Washington Post. The only things listed to the right are links to other stories on the site, none of which have anything to do with "conspiracy theories". Unless, of course, you consider the advice columnist "Dear Prudence" some kind of agent-provocateur.

The whole point being, that the current administration has been on a information clamp-down for some time now. As Dorosh points out, extensively under the umbrella of "national security", but more, as the article points out, for the reasons of bureaucratic self-importance ("because we can").

[John Kettler]

Here is a particularly damning example of government reclassification, made all the more ridiculous by the fact that many of the weapons in the list are long gone from service and likely dismantled as well.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/index.htm

Here we see how fundamental information is denied

the public by the Labor Department through treating mine inspector's notes, previously available under FOIA, as FOIA exempt.

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=989

"The World's Right to Know" indicates that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to thwart FOIA. Not addressed is the government's frequent refusal to waive copying fees, which is supposed to be routine for journalistic cases. This acts as a major damper on smaller publications' ability to conduct research.

http://www.freedominfo.org/features/20020700.htm

Under "Behaving Badly" here we find a judge's ruling that the Commerce Department has systematically since 1996 not lived up to its legal obligations for discovery and under FOIA.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0805/081205lb.htm

This is how tough it can be even absent an outright refusal.

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2003/sep/m16-021.shtml

This confirms the very thing so many people are reporting regarding reclassification and administrative holds on information formerly public.

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/658/1/108

Many of the segments here deal not only with government witholding of information but also with

ever worsening legal attacks on those who disclose

what the government wishes to hide. It's gotten so bad that if the Pentagon Papers had occurred these days, a bunch of people would've gone to jail for mere receipt, courtesy of stretching the Espionage Act way past its elastic limits.

http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/pages/resources/index.xml

And this one details a laundry list of violations by the FBI which is astounding even by the government's generally low standards. Have just begun to wade through this one.

http://www.superpatriots.us/fbi/index.htm

Fair Use is claimed for the following brief item.

Secrecy Fights Loom Large in D.C.

Topics: U.S. government | secrecy

Source: Legal Times, December 18, 2002

"The administration's fight to keep a tight hold over government information is far from over," reports Vanessa Blum. "Watchdog groups continue attempts to penetrate the inner sanctum of the executive branch using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other open government laws." Numerous FOIA fights are currently underway against the White House and Justice Department. "It's absolute trench warfare," says Georgetown University Law Center professor David Vladeck. "We've had to litigate cases that we would never have brought before because the information ordinarily would have been disclosed."

The above are but a tiny fraction of the evidence indicating that, to put it charitably, the government has significantly reduced access to once routinely available information, much of it having zero WoT significance.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Harry Yeide]

Test case yesterday at NARA (having used time off to get there): 10:00 pull, records delivered at 11:51. A "regular" day is now a 4-1/2 hour day of actual work.

Sorry about the Canadian mess.

[Bannon DC]

Here is one of the articles that ran in the Washington Post over the summer:

Washington Post article

Excerpt (Note -- articles on the Post site are eventually archived and unavailable after a certain amount of time):

Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout

Documents Altered To Conceal Data

By Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, August 21, 2006; Page A01

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

...

The report comes at a time when the Bush administration's penchant for government secrecy has troubled researchers and bred controversy over agency efforts to withhold even seemingly innocuous information. The National Archives was embroiled in scandal during the spring when it was disclosed that the agency had for years kept secret a reclassification program under which the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies removed thousands of records from public shelves.

etc.