Federal Recycling Plans Spook Security Experts

As the Bush Administration seeks to improve the federal government’s none-too-stellar record on safeguarding the environment, it is running into an unexpected stumbling block in one area: its efforts to force the federal bureaucracy to recycle the 50,000 tons of memos, reports, plans and directives that it spews out every year.

The security-minded are resisting it.

Government being government, bureaucrats have begun holding meetings about recycling, writing memos and--of course--drafting regulations. But most government agencies have made considerable progress in following the Administration’s tough new recycling guidelines.

BACKGROUND: The Environmental Protection Agency now recycles about 75% of the estimated two tons of office paper that it churns out every day. It requires photocopier operators to use both sides of a page in copying documents. And it uses recycled paper for all of its own letters and memos.

Even the White House is getting involved. Grass clippings from the White House lawns are taken away to be turned into mulch. And soda cans and newspapers are regularly picked up to be sent to the recycling plant.

But then there is the spy problem: About 25% of the paper that passes through the executive offices in the White House complex is classified as confidential or secret--and it is supposed to be placed in special “burn bags,” whose contents are shredded.

To avoid the possibility that someone might inadvertently put a top-secret document in the wrong wastebasket--where it would simply be thrown out rather than painstakingly shredded--the White House has plans to begin shredding all of its wastepaper, not just the top-secret kind.

Someone unschooled in the ways of national security might think shredding is a perfect environmental solution. It seemingly would prepare the paper for eventual recycling. And it would make the documents almost useless to foreign agents.

But the Iranian takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 showed otherwise. Occupying Iranians carefully pieced together thousands of bits of shredded classified documents and published them--to U.S. embarrassment--as “Documents from the Nest of Spies.”

Determined to prevent a recurrence, U.S. security experts ordered new shredders that tear paper into tiny bits, destroying most of the paper fibers in the process. Once the fibers are gone, there’s nothing left to recycle. You might as well just burn the paper completely.

OUTLOOK: It is too early to say how the problem will be resolved, but, like all good government disputes, it has been referred to a committee. Officials hope to find a compromise between the needs of national security and the desires of recycling advocates.

White House aides have been carrying on discussions with paper companies to see if there is a market for their tons of truncated paper fibers, and officials hope that, before the year is out, the government’s paper flow will be both spy-proof and environmentally sensitive.