The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

being on schedule. Current projec- tions are to meet publication dead- lines (2011-2019) for most, if not all, of the series covering the Reagan years. But a major challenge remains: the volumes must be cleared by other concerned agencies, and frequently the intelligence com- munity objects to the release of doc- uments that the State Department has agreed to declassify. Indeed, at least once in the past, a volume has been completed (and printed) but not released due to con- tinuing objection by another agency. More recently, a volume on our rela- tions with Japan from 1964 to 1968 reportedly was held up for seven years and was ultimately released only after documents of concern to intelligence agencies were withheld. But who cares if there is an extra year of delay? It isn’t noon briefing press guidance, after all — it’s history. Obviously such history is a sensi- tive topic. Congress has directed that the FRUS be “thorough, accurate and reliable.” The requirement to be complete resulted, for example, in the issuance of an expanded (i.e., more accurate) volume addressing the 1954 coup in Guatemala because the origi- nal publication had passed over CIA involvement in the operation. A fully complete and accurate study was not released until 2003. Even release of the most complete material, however, does not necessar- ily quell controversy: the residual question of the degree of Israeli cul- pability in the 1967 Israeli Air Force attack on the intelligence vessel USS Liberty remains unresolved despite the 2004 release of extensive National Security Agency intercepts. For ded- icated conspiracy theorists, as well as historians, there will always be ques- tions regarding whether everything has been released. An ancillary problem is overall supervision of the interagency review process for FRUS volumes. At one point, it was centered at State; but, presumably to accelerate the process, material is now sent simultaneously to multiple agencies — some of which may not favor declassification. Manuscripts — supposedly fiction as well as nonfiction — by Foreign Service officers and other State Department personnel (either active- duty or retired) are also subject to mandatory review. Thus, at various times the memoirs and accounts of the high-ranking (Secretaries Kissin- ger, Vance, Christopher and Albright) and the less prominent have been read by a designated reviewer familiar with the topic, then circulated to department bureaus and other agen- cies if it appears that their equities may be involved. If the writer has attentively avoid- ed reference to classified material, focused on material in the public domain, and emphasized that contro- versial comment is personal opinion (not U.S. policy), the clearance process may be completed in as little as two months. If there are differ- ences over whether material can be included, it is possible to appeal. In other agencies, such as the CIA, books have been published with blacked-out sections to demonstrate the extent of agency censorship in specific areas. Information on Demand: The FOIA Process at State FOIA remains a work in progress at State and, indeed, throughout the government. At its inception, rules were in flux, and there were problems with the automatic declassification of relatively lowly classified material or essentially unclassified material with only handling restrictions. For instance, relatively early in the process, in the 1980s, a Canadian jour- nalist, Jean Francois Lisee, requested information regarding U.S.-Quebec- Canada relations for a book he was writing. During the period for which he sought information, technical limi- tations in communications at our con- sulates in Quebec resulted in much of the material being “classified” at low levels — and consequently it was released virtually automatically. A more significant 1977 State Depart- ment/interagency study (“The Quebec Situation: Outlook and Implications”), initially classified as secret, assessing U.S. attitudes toward an independent Quebec was also released. The result was dramatic; Lisee’s book, In the Eye of the Eagle , roiled our bilateral relations for years. Fol- lowing that episode and the release of other material that proved con- tentious in Ottawa, the Canada desk now reviews every item proposed for release in careful detail. Having received a FOIA request, the supervisor of the appropriate ISS/IPS branch distributes it on the basis of available officers. The law stipulates that requesters must receive a reply within 20 working days, but in practice the initial response is normal- ly limited to a “we’re working on it” acknowlegement of receipt. Other priorities often intervene; funding and personnel are always in short supply. In 2001, the department was dinged by the General Account- ing Office (now the Government Ac- countability Office) and given ex- tremely low marks on addressing the S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 Between 1995 and 2006, 98 million pages of material were reviewed at State and more than 78 million pages were declassified.