The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 ver the course of their careers at the Department of State, Foreign and Civil Service employees deal with and create tens of thousands of classified docu- ments. Traditionally, they give little attention to the full life cycle of classi- fied material — its retention, review, declassification and ultimate release. But as these issues impinge on the reality of the 21st-century Foreign Service, with its widening dimensions of information, and also more intense and sometimes conflicting concerns over security versus openness, it can be helpful to look at the process at work beneath the surface of the day-to-day operational use of classified material. Sooner, not later, each of us will be grappling with ques- tions of releasability of such information under Freedom of Information Act requirements. Just how can information continue to be protected, and should it be? Or, from anoth- er standpoint, what can an individual personally write — when on active duty, after resignation or in retirement? The issues are complex, so the following overview is designed to give some insight into how the FOIA and declassification system operate in this transition time. Classified, by Definition The Department of State both generates and receives a great deal of classified information from sources outside the public purview. This includes private communications from and discussions with foreign governments; global assess- ments of issues and problems by FSOs and department ana- lysts; electronic intercepts; satellite photography; and mili- tary and intelligence agency materials. The imperative is to keep such material from those not authorized to have access to it. All material is graded by clas- sification levels, access codes and “compartment” restric- tions. It is not enough to have the proper security clearance to see such material; one must have a “need to know,” that is, a specific, job-related requirement for the information. Yet the information obtained by the Department of State and other government agencies has been obtained through the expenditure of public funds and, consequently, should normally be available to the public. And in fact, the depart- ment has conducted systematic declassification of its docu- ments and responded to public requests under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act since 1967, when the law signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1966, went into effect. One must praise a system which, flying against historical precedent, is philosophically committed to providing the U.S. public with detailed information on its foreign affairs — warts and (almost) all. How It Works at State At State, overall control of information resides in the vast warren of the Administration Bureau. As of mid-2007, the bureau consisted of three deputy assistant secretaries, 19 offices and other special groups, such as the Records Management Center and Directives Management. Sub- ordinate to the DAS for information-sharing services, the B EHIND O FFICIAL S ECRECY : FOIA AND D ECLASSIFICATION AT S TATE T HE CREATION AND HANDLING OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IS ONLY PART OF THE LIFE CYCLE OF OFFICIAL SECRETS . H ERE IS A LOOK AT THE OTHER PART . O B Y D AVID T. J ONES David T. Jones, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, is a frequent contributor to the Journal .