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INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL TO
INCLUDE
KEY WYDEN MEASURE ON CLASSIFICATION
Bipartisan amendment gives Independent
National Security
Classification Board power to reexamine classification decisions
September 29,
2004
Washington, DC – An amendment
by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to name an Independent National
Security Classification Board to reexamine classification decisions
at the request of Congress was included today in the National
Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. The bipartisan amendment, offered
with Senators Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Olympia
Snowe (R-Maine) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), would also give Congress
a role in the development of the National Intelligence Director’s
new classification guidelines and standards. The amendment echoes
bipartisan legislation introduced in July by Wyden and others
to revamp the way intelligence information becomes classified
and to create a congressional appeals process.
“It’s time to throw
open the curtains and let the sun shine in on the governmental
process much brighter than it does today,” said Wyden. “This
amendment strikes a balance between protecting legitimate national
security interests and ensuring the people’s right to information
about their safety and security.”
Under the amendment, the existing,
non-partisan, independent Public Interest Declassification Board
is renamed the Independent National Security Classification Board.
This amendment gives Congress for the first time an independent,
standing body to which it can appeal a national security classification
decision. Governor Thomas H. Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission,
has been quoted saying that three quarters of the classified material
he had read should not have been classified. His panel’s
report, presented largely without redactions, was an exception
to a long-standing practice of overclassifying national security
information.
“The ability to stamp
a document ‘secret’ is one of the most powerful tools
in government,” said Wyden. “It was a power wielded
by bureaucrats in 18 Federal agencies last year to classify more
than 14 million new documents. It is a power that now costs American
taxpayers about $6.5 billion a year. It is a power that is out
of control. The system used to classify information for national
security purposes is broken and this important amendment will
fix this problem.”
Wyden worked with Senators Susan
Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the Chairman and
Ranking Democratic Member of the Senate Government Affairs Committee,
to pass this amendment and include it in the overall intelligence
reform bill.
Wyden has long sought to increase
openness in the Federal government. In 2000, Wyden and the late
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) released a joint report
on government secrecy. The report, Secrecy in International and
Domestic Policy Making: The Case for More Sunshine,” examined
the sweeping impact government secrecy has on a wide array of
issues important to the American people. The Moynihan-Wyden report
showed that on vital matters from trade to determining interest
rates to the environment, organizations as diverse as the World
Trade Organization and the Federal Reserve Board regularly conduct
important business behind closed doors. The report also made a
series of policy recommendations in order to promote more clarity
and openness in government deliberations and actions.
The National Intelligence Reform
Act of 2004 must be approved by the full Senate and reconciled
with intelligence reform legislation in the House of Representatives
before becoming law.
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