Hoping to restore its reputation among scholars and members of the public, the [U.S.] National Archives and Records Administration said last week that it would stop making secret agreements with government agencies that allow them to withdraw documents from the archives for national-security reasons, without public notice, and to restore the documents' classified status.
The move came the same day that officials disclosed that the archives had secretly made a deal with the Central Intelligence Agency soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The agreement allowed CIA agents to remove items from the archives without leaving any public record of what had been removed.
Allen Weinstein, who has been the archives' director since last year, said last week that he had learned of the agreement only the week before, and that he had immediately rushed to denounce it. He sought, successfully, to get the agreement declassified...."There can never be a classified aspect to our mission," said Mr. Weinstein, in a written statement. "Classified agreements are the antithesis of our reason for being."..."We really are going to be much more transparent in our actions with agencies," added [Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the archives]. "Our mission is to make documents available, and we take that very seriously."..."This whole episode has been a genuine scandal for the archives," said Steven Aftergood, who directs a project at the Federation of American Scientists that tracks government secrecy. "One expects a certain degree of mischief from the CIA and other agencies — they mislead people all the time," said Mr. Aftergood. "That has been not been the normal experience at the archives....It is important that the archives be a champion of access to records and not a tool of other agencies that might have an interest in shaping perceptions of that record," added Mr. Aftergood.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/24/2006 04:06:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
