National Declassification Center within an existing agency, most logically the National Archives and Records Administration.

Conclusion

The twelve Commissioners have brought to this inquiry a diverse range of perspectives drawn from varied backgrounds in the Executive and Legislative Branches and in the public and private sectors. Yet despite varied philosophies and work experiences, the Commissioners all agree with the need to change the system in place today for protecting government secrets in response to the dramatic transformations that have occurred since the only prior statutory commission completed its work some four decades ago. New approaches are needed not only because of changing security threats and risks, but also because costs must be contained; while redundancies perhaps could be tolerated in the past, today's realities require much more efficient, prioritized, and cost-effective procedures.

Chapters II through V amplify on the general observations outlined above in the four areas of classification, declassification, personnel security, and information systems security. Each chapter also explores the historical roots of current practices and the consequences for both the dissemination of government information to the public and the sharing of information within the Federal Government. Among the key themes addressed, which transcend the specific findings and recommendations in each chapter, are the functioning of the bureaucracy that has developed over the past half century to protect government secrets; the efforts to promote greater oversight and accountability; and the various costs associated with both protecting secrets and reducing secrecy.

The Commission recognizes the obstacles to achieving substantial improvements, at least in the short term. At the same time, it believes that there now exists a heightened opportunity to propose and build support for changes intended to reduce secrecy and improve the protection of what remains secret. The chapters that follow detail the changes that the Commission recommends to meet both of these objectives.

'Department of Defense, Committee on Classified Information, Report to the Secretary of Defense by the Committee on Classified Information (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 8 November 1956), 6.

2 Thomas Lipscomb, "American Competitiveness in the Information Age," presentation at the National Policy Forum Conference (Washington, D.C., 25 October 1995), quoting James Billington, the Librarian of Congress.

3

3 Edward A. Shils, The Torment of Secrecy (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1956, reprint with an

Introduction by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1996), 26.

5 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Meeting the Espionage Challenge: A Review of

United States Counterintelligence and Security Programs, 99th Cong., 2d sess., 1986, Rpt. 99522,78.

"At the same time, as Lockheed Martin Skunk Works President Jack S. Gordon made clear in a letter and an accompanying "white paper" sent to the Commission on September 18, 1995, the firm worked to ensure that its security practices protected technological capabilities without imposing unnecessary costs or imposing counterproductive restraints on its own officials (Jack S. Gordon, letter to Commission staff, 18 September 1995).

7 Thomas M. Franck and Edward Weisband, “Dissemblement, Secrecy, and Executive Privilege in the Foreign Relations of Three Democracies: A Comparative Analysis," in Secrecy and Foreign Policy, ed. Thomas M. Franck and Edward Weisband (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 400-01.

8 Bok, Secrets, 175.

9 Ibid., 9.

10 Defense Science Board Task Force on Secrecy, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Secrecy (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, 1 July 1970), 9.

"I William S. Moorhead, “Operation and Reform of the Classification System in the United States," in Secrecy and Foreign Policy, 90. At the time of his writing, Representative Moorhead was Chairman of the Foreign Operations and Government Information Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee.

12 General Accounting Office, Classified Information: Costs of Protection Are Integrated With Other Security Costs, NSIAD-94-55 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, October 1993), 1; Joint Security Commission, Redefining Security (Washington, D.C.: 28 February 1994), 115.

13 Harold C. Relyea, "National Security and Information," Government Information Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1987), 11, 19.

14 Arnold Wolfers, "National Security' As An Ambiguous Symbol," Political Science Quarterly 67 (December 1952), 481-502, cited in Relyea, "National Security and Information," 12. 15 Commission staff visit to National Security Agency and review of approximately 100 classified documents, 11 September 1996.

16 Richard M. Neustadt, letter to Chairman Glenn English, 5 May 1982 (House Committee on Government Operations, Executive Order on Security Classification: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, 97th Cong., 2d sess., 10 March 1982 and 5 May 1982, Appendix 5).

17

Department of the Navy v. Egan, 384 U.S. 518, 527 (1988).

18 Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 637 (1952).

II

Rethinking Classification:

Better Protection and Greater

Openness

To the credit of the 29 departments and agencies that currently possess the authority to classify information, there have been serious efforts in recent years to improve classification management practices. There has been a growing recognition of the need to replace a risk avoidance approach to security, which seeks to anticipate all risks in the protection of assets, with a risk management approach, which seeks to concentrate limited resources on those assets the loss of which would have the most profound effect on the national security. Today, fewer individuals are authorized to classify information in the first instance than ever before, and efforts are underway to better ensure that these classifiers are more aware of their responsibilities and are evaluated on their classification decisions. The number of special access programs and compartments designed to provide additional protection beyond that of the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels has been reduced. Progress has been made in moving large quantities of information out of the remaining compartments and programs and into the three classification levels, where it is more easily used by a broader range of "customers." Most importantly, the number of classification actions continues to decline and today is at its lowest point since the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) began compiling classification statistics in 1979.'

Notwithstanding these efforts and results to date, more information continues to be classified than national security needs require. Risk management continues to be more of a goal than an operative philosophy guiding today's security decisions. Serious questions remain about the process by which classification decisions are made, and about the oversight, training, and accountability of those who make classification decisions. Particularly disturbing is the continued perception among many inside the Government that the current classification system simultaneously fails to protect the nation's core secrets while still classifying too much. Justice Potter Stewart's observation that "when everything is classified, then nothing is classified" remains very relevant today. As long as more information than necessary is classified, the longterm benefits of the progress cited above will be limited-benefits such as the enhanced protection of the nation's core secrets, the cost savings that will come from limiting classification, and the value of the American public knowing about the operations and activities of its government. This is particularly true given the information explosion in which the amount of data overall will increase dramatically in the years ahead.

If the progress already made is to continue, there must be a renewed focus on the allimportant initial decision of whether to classify at all. Avoiding unnecessary classification in the first place should allow for a more efficient use of already-limited resources by focusing on that which truly needs protection. Combined with the proper implementation of classification practices, this also should lessen the burden of subsequent declassification efforts, contributing to a more orderly and cost-efficient review

and release of information to the public. And finally, a more thoughtful and balanced consideration of the need for secrecy should enable government officials to better understand the importance of a particular piece of information and why it needs to be protected, leading to enhanced safeguarding of the nation's secrets.

This chapter describes the current classification system and recent improvements to it, and highlights those areas that the Commission finds most ripe for attention as the decades-old struggle between secrecy and openness proceeds into the Information Age. Commission recommendations in this area attempt to reorient the classification decisionmaking process from one that perpetuates a "default" to classification, in which personnel tend to classify more by rote than by reason, to one that involves a more balanced assessment of the need for secrecy.

Toward a Life Cycle Approach to
Classification Management

A meaningful assessment of the need for protection over the long term requires
revisiting the initial decision to classify throughout the period in which the information is
of value (i.e., throughout the life cycle of that information). Viewing information, and
the records in which that information is contained, as having a "life span" is not a novel
approach. The Information Resources Management Service of the General Services
Administration, for example, maintains that "each type of record has its own distinct
life cycle; records are born, reproduced, . . . processed, consulted, reviewed, sent to
the sidelines, brought back for consultation, may be reborn into another document, and
eventually end up in the trash or permanent storage." Likewise, in developing policy
for its management of electronic records, the National Archives and Records Adminis-
tration incorporated "traditional records management theory... reflecting the life
cycle of records-creation and receipt, maintenance and use, and disposition.'

Despite being required to mark documents to indicate which portions are classified and which are not, employees in some agencies continue to mark materials "Entire Text Classified," increasing the difficulty of distinguishing which parts truly need protection and which might later be declassified.

Such management concepts, however, have been applied only to very
limited areas of the Government. The various stages of the life cycle still
often are viewed as distinct from one another with respect to the man-
agement of classified information. The disjointed nature of current
information management practices has a range of troubling conse-
quences. Decisions concerning up-front classification practices (such as
portion marking, which designates the parts of a record that are classified
and the degree of protection needed) often proceed without any real
consideration for how these practices will affect subsequent use of the
records or efforts to declassify them. In fact, the tremendous backlog of
records currently being encountered in the systematic review of older
documents, discussed in Chapter III, is in large part the result of poor
records management practices at earlier stages of the records' life cycle.
Despite recent initiatives being developed by the National Archives, the
Federal Government as a whole still lacks any coordinated plan to oversee the creation.
and management of electronic records, which encompass a rapidly growing share of
the documents and images now being created and classified.