Agencies have an extra year and a half to finish declassifying old records and documents considered to have historical value, under an executive order issued by President Clinton last week.
In Executive Order 12958, issued in 1995, President Clinton mandated declassification of historically valuable information that is at least 25 years old. Clinton gave agencies five years to comply with the order.
Agencies have been given an 18-month extension on the deadline for complying with that order, largely because some haven't kept pace with the declassification effort, said Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
Aftergood singled out the CIA and the Defense Department as among the biggest declassification laggards. These agencies need more time to review sensitive documents, he said.
While Clinton's original order suggested a need for automatic declassification of records more than 25 years old, recent legislative efforts have slowed down the process by requiring page-by-page reviews of more sensitive national security records.
"The extension will allow more time to do that review so that less information will end up being declassified," Aftergood said, adding he was disappointed the Clinton administration didn't put greater pressure on agencies to comply with the order's original deadline.
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