Over at Ace of Spades HQ, “Purple Avenger” tries to decipher the inscrutable Obama administration policy on information classification:
Here’s what I’ve found so far that I’m 100% sure of:
— There’s a 10 year “default” on declassifying classified info unless a longer time frame was specified and justified.
— Unclassified information may BECOME classified upon submission of a FOIA request for it . . . thus allowing for a public veneer of openness while reserving the right to clam up if said openness should prove inconvenient when someone actually learns of a document’s existence and has the nerve to request it.
Its a very lengthy and tortuously worded EO and people will be analyzing its ramifications for quite a while I suspect. I don’t imagine the professional intelligence community is terribly happy about the Byzantine procedures outlined here. Their jobs just got a lot harder.
