How are documents declassified?

[Sampiro]

I’ve done some googling but haven’t yet found a clear answer. In regards to today’s news about Bush/Plame, does the president have to go through a process to declassify a document? Can it be declassified but its declassification not made public? Thanks for any info.

[Kozmik]

I was watching World News Tonight and it was reported that all the President needs is to issue an executive order. If this is the route the President takes then it will most definitely be made public. I don’t believe that an executive order can be classified. The usual declasification process involves the State Department examining each document at the Presidental Library years later. It’s ongoing and usually done under E.O. 12356, EO 12958, ect. So then you can go to the Presidential Library and search for it, but no proclamation or anything like that.

There is one exception. When I worked at a Presidential Library I would occasionally see senior Administration officials perusing the files. If they were the original author or the recipient of the document, they could access regardless of classification. And I believe if you have security clearance then you could also access the files. Yeah, really, the President or Kissinger could walk in and go through all the Library archives.

[Squink]

@Kozmik

I don’t believe that an executive order can be classified.

Not true, we just don’t hear about them much.

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

[Kozmik]

@Squink

Not true, we just don’t hear about them much. Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

I stand corrected. And this class of executive order is given under a different name by each Administration (or at least, interestingly, a different name under each Administration that was not “connected” with the previous Administration)

[Otto]

Am I mistaken in thinking that some classification of documents automatically become declassified after a certain amount of time unless they are specifically classified for a longer time? I seem to recall reading about some examples of one president or another extending the classification period for documents (I want to say Bush I extending classification on documents relating to Iran/Contra but I could be mixing it up with the pardon issue).

[Asimovian]

@Kozmik

And I believe if you have security clearance then you could also access the files. Yeah, really, the President or Kissinger could walk in and go through all the Library archives.

That isn’t quite true. The president may be an exception – I don’t know how his classification works. But for normal people, holding a security clearance is not a free pass. There are (at minimum) two factors beyond the level of clearance itself that come into play:

1. Need To Know. The fact that I have a certain level of clearance doesn’t mean I can pick up any document I run across or visit any facilities labeled with that same clearance level. If the classfied document or area has nothing to do with my clearance, I still have no right to it.

2. Issuing Agency. My clearance was granted to me by the FBI. This does not mean that I can view any classified documents where the classification was done by any other government agency (CIA, NSA, DOE, etc.).