Agencies misuse classification authority, managers say

Government officials said on Tuesday that federal agencies improperly classify at least half of all documents, adding that senior managers have a responsibility to set a tone and provide adequate training that prevents abuse of classification authorities.

"It is no secret that the government classifies too much information," William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. He said the amount of improperly classified information has been "disturbingly increasing" since last year in "clear, blatant violation" of regulations.

A recent focus on classification issues has prompted reviews by federal agencies and departments. For example, the Defense Department is reviewing whether it properly classified information in reports on abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and whether documents related to pre-war Iraq and Afghanistan can be declassified, said Carol Haave, Defense undersecretary for counterintelligence and security.

After the hearing, Leonard told Government Executive that at the end of the month, his office will examine how the FBI uses its classification authorities. His office determined that an examination was needed after reviewing FBI briefings before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the summer of 2002 that focused on a former FBI contract linguist, Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds alleges that the FBI mishandled information that might have tipped the government to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before they occurred.

Leonard said FBI officials improperly revealed classified information during the 2002 briefings. The briefings, in turn, caused committee members Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to send letters of inquiry to FBI and Justice Department officials. Last June, however, the Justice Department asserted that material in the briefings was classified -- and therefore, the letters were, too. The Judiciary Committee has since removed the letters from its Web site, but they remain available elsewhere on the Internet.

According to Leonard, a review of FBI procedures is now warranted because it appears that bureau officials do not have a clear understanding of how to handle classified information.

Tuesday's hearing was held in response to recommendations from the 9/11 commission that agencies need to share more information. The commission recommended that information procedures provide incentives for sharing in order to create a better balance between security and knowledge. The commission also proposed that the overall budget of the intelligence community should be declassified.

The security oversight office estimates that more than 14 million government documents were classified in fiscal 2003, an increase of 8 percent over the previous year. An annual report released by ISOO in July said that federal agencies and departments spent about $6.5 billion in 2003 to classify information, which was about $1 billion more than the government spent in 2002 on classification activities. The government has about 4,000 people whose job it is to classify information.

According to Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays, R-Conn., "current classification practices are highly subjective, inconsistent and susceptible to abuse."

"Recently declassified documents confirm the elaborate and costly security applied to much information is simply not worth the effort or the expense," Shays said. "A former dictator's cocktail preferences and a facetious plot against Santa Claus are no threat to national security in the public domain, yet both were classified."

Committees that have studied the issue of overclassification found it difficult to estimate how much material is in that category, but some estimate that as much as 90 percent is, Shays said.

Haave said she believes that 50 percent is improperly classified. Leonard said he would "put it almost even beyond 50-50 in terms of when it comes to applying judgment."

Witnesses who testified Tuesday said that agency leaders were ultimately responsible for setting the tone at their agencies when it comes to classification.

"My perception is that it's the agency-head level that is the most important; perhaps even more important in some ways than the president," Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told the subcommittee. "If you look back over the past decade, what you'd see is that openness and transparency flourish where the agency head cares about the subject and wants it to happen."