2 Lawmakers Push to Open U.S. Records

Two lawmakers, one the author of a book on the dangers of secrecy and the other a former CIA agent, announced legislation Wednesday that could speed the declassification of reams of government documents.

“We’re talking about the American public’s sense of their government and their confidence in it,” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) at a news conference with the legislation’s House sponsor, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.)

The legislation would create a board that would act as a clearinghouse for declassification requests and help move them along. Moynihan, whose most recent book, “Secrecy: The American Experience,” is about post-Cold War secrets in government, volunteered to lead the board after he retires from the Senate next year.

Goss is a former CIA agent who worked on clandestine operations in Latin America, the Caribbean and parts of Europe during the 1960s.

To illustrate how keeping information secret can erode the public’s trust in government, Moynihan cited polls indicating that many Americans believe President Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA. Many of the Kennedy papers were classified until recently.

Most documents 25 years or older must be declassified. There are 1.5 billion documents that fit that category.

The Moynihan-Goss bill would create a nine-member Public Interest Declassification Board responsible for identifying and prioritizing declassification requests. The board would concentrate on issues of pressing public curiosity, such as the interest in whether the CIA played a role in human rights abuses in the regime of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet.

The National Security Council and the Justice Department are doing separate searches for CIA documents on Pinochet, and Congress has proposed a third search. The board could coordinate those searches in a more organized and timely manner, Goss said.