Published time: October 02, 2013 03:23
AFP Photo / Darren Hauck
US government employees whose job it is to examine and classify American secrets average more than two mistakes per document, in part because of inadequate training and other factors, according to a formal, internal review by the US Department of Justice.
The September audit by the Justice Department’s inspector general
sought to determine if the government’s tendency to over-classify
documents actually hurts the very national security it purports
to protect.
Published Monday, the report found 357 total marking errors
within 141 documents.
The overview was inspired in part by the September 11, 2001
Commission Report, which described how the tragedy could have
been averted if intelligence agencies were not reluctant to share
information with each other. Congress, building off that
recommendation, later passed the Reduced Over-Classification Act
of 2010. The law called for greater cooperation with “public
access to information” and between federal agencies.
The audit described a plethora of documents that were missing
instructions describing how its contents should be declassified.
Furthermore, a number of marking errors were discovered that has
hampered the cooperation and transparency Congress requested.
“Some of these marking errors included missing, incomplete, or
incorrect classification blocks, source references, portion
markings, dissemination markings, and declassification
instructions,” the report states. “Department of Justice
component officials generally agreed with our findings that some
information in certain documents should not have been classified
and that the markings on many documents were not accurate.”
One example explained how an FBI employee classified a terrorist
watch list, a document that should be available to the public.
The employee in question told inspector general Michael Horowitz
that he “was following previous work experience practices from
another Intelligence Community agency,” thought to be the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Despite this incident and more than a hundred like it, the
inspector general wrote that he “did not find indications of
widespread misclassifications.” However, it “did identify
deficiencies with the implementation of the Department of
Justice’s classification program, including persistent
misunderstanding and lack of knowledge of certain classification
processes by officials within Justice Department components.”
The latest report could have implications for alleviating the
burden of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure
requests for unreleased information. According to the Department
of Justice, its FOIA system received and processed 63,000 FOIA
requests in 2011, representing a five percent increase from the
year prior. The number of backlogged requests that year increased
from 70,000 to over 83,000 even as the federal government
increased full-time staff to process disclosure requests.
Copyright: RT