The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

which there was a State Department equity. The effort, however, is not com- plete: other agencies have identified documents with State equities num- bering in the hundreds of thousands (just as State, in its review, identified documents including material of con- cern to other agencies). The objective is to review all of this material by the end of 2009. Moreover, newly discov- ered documents subject to automatic declassification keep turning up from the files of long-term employees who were “pack rats” so far as their per- sonal files were concerned. The masses of paper documents declassified are routinely transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, where after NARA processing they are publicly available. Other documents that have been reviewed electronically, notably State Department telegrams from 1973 to 1975, are available in an electronic archival data base ( http://aad.archives . gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=40 73). It is still not possible, however, to transfer a document that has been declassified through a FOIA request directly from the classified electronic system where it was reviewed to an unclassified system accessible to the public. Research is ongoing to permit such transfer and access, but there is no projected date for reaching this objective. Consequently, there is no way for the public to know electroni- cally whether a specific document has already been declassified and released to an FOIA requester. Impressive Results The dimensions of the overall clas- sification/declassification undertaking across the U.S. government are indi- cated in the Information Security Oversight Office’s 2007 Report to the President ( www.archives.gov/isoo/re ports/2007-annual-report.pdf). In Fiscal Year 2007, more than 23 mil- lion classification decisions were made and more than 37 million pages of historically valuable records were declassified (out of more than 59 mil- lion pages reviewed). The volume of declassifications is significantly below those between 1996 and 1998, when nearly 200 mil- lion pages were declassified each year. Total security classification costs for the government for FY 2007 were estimated at $8.65 billion, up slightly from $8.2 billion in FY 2006. Unfortunately, the systematic declassification process at State has been imposed as an “unfunded man- date” — with the department re- quired to comply, but having insuffi- cient funds and resources. Over the years, approximately 200 retired FSOs (designated When Actually Employed) have conducted this work. They both review paper documents at State Annex 13 in Newington, Va., and continue the review process with computerized screening of more cur- rent telegrams on a daily basis in department facilities as funding is available. Yet massive amounts of material have been declassified. Between 1995 and 2006, 98 million pages were reviewed and more than 78 million pages were declassified. Additionally, in FY 2007 alone, department officers reviewed more than 6.7 million pages in both electronic and paper form, and released more than 5.7 million pages. In the process, the State Depart- ment also created a series of special collections containing declassified documents in areas where there has been persistent public perception that “something was rotten” somewhere. Special collections running over 100,000 pages have been released on such topics as the Argentina dictator- ship, 1975-1984; Chile (in three sec- tions), 1968-1991; and the American churchwomen murdered in El Salva- dor in 1980. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s telephone transcripts have been posted, as well. Of enduring public interest are documents pertaining to mysteries such as the fate of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, whose efforts to save Jewish refugees in Europe dur- ing World War II led to his imprison- ment and, presumably, death in Soviet hands; or the circumstances under which Amelia Earhart died, with intimations that she was engaged in a spying mission for the U.S. when she disappeared and was murdered by the Japanese, rather than dying as a result of poor navigation over the Pacific. The department is not the only official repository for Department of State documents. Presidential librar- ies also have in their files masses of department telegrams and memoran- da (often of the highest classification, and thus the most interesting to schol- ars and journalists). Material identi- fied in the presidential libraries is referred to the agencies with primary subject matter interest for their judg- ment on declassification/release. Re- portedly, there are 950,000 pages of material, primarily from the Carter and Reagan presidential libraries, awaiting State Department review. FRUS-tratingly Slow All volumes of the Foreign Rela- tions of the United States series, pro- duced by the State Department his- torian’s office, require systematic de- classification review as well as intera- gency clearance. These volumes are supposed to contain pertinent materi- al 30 years in the past; hence, volumes covering U.S. foreign affairs through 1978 should be released by 2008. But until recently, the office ran far behind schedule. However, following substantial efforts begun in 2001 by a new, “clean broom” State Department historian and an expanded profes- sional staff, FRUS is now closer to 58 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