In February of 1998, Booze Allen Hamilton was under contract with the United States Government to help federal officials comply with Executive Order 12958. The order was intended to facilitate the declassification of federal information. It “set in motion a five year time limit (April 1995 - April 2000) within which all classified information more than 25 years old and judged to be of permanent historical value shall be reviewed for declassification and declassified unless it meets certain definitive exemption criteria. All material not meeting the exemption criteria will be automatically declassified-whether or not the records have been reviewed” (1).
On February 13, 1998, Booz Allen Hamilton completed a document titled “Operations Security Impact on Declassification Management Within the Department of Defense.” This report(2)can be read online at: www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod_opsec.html It made a number of declassification recommendations after its authors reviewed relevant archived materials, spoke with archival staff and interviewed three key individuals: Jean Schauble, the Director of the Records Declassification Division at the National Archives And Records Administration; LTC Gary Moore, the Operations Officer of the U.S. Army Declassification Activity; and “one interviewee from the Defense Intelligence Agency [name DELETED].”
Consider the following 1998 document when thinking about the release of information by our (and other) governments:
“The use of the Internet could reduce the unrestrained public appetite for “secrets” by providing good faith distraction material”
“A strategy could then be devised by DoD and the components, based upon this evaluation, to implement a coherent and complimentary plan to achieve the declassification goals. For example:
=> Diversion: List of interesting declassified material - i.e. Kennedy assassination data.”
