ADDRESS
 
 OF
 
 
 THE HONORABLE JANET RENO
 
 
 UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL
 
 
 BEFORE
 
 THE
 
 
 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWSPAPER EDITORS
 
 
 
 
 APRIL 17, 1996
 





(In presenting this address, the Attorney General may depart from the 
text, but she stands behind the text as printed.) 
 I have appreciated the opportunity to work with the American Society
of Newspaper Editors, which has led the way to help make our government
more open and to make information more accessible and timely.

 Let me tell you one reason why our joint efforts are so important and
update you on the Department's progress. 

 Recently, at the Justice Department, one of our young people who is a lot
more talented at using a computer than I am, did some research on the
Information Superhighway. She looked for the number of news stories which
contained the words "cynicism" or "mistrust" within a word or two of the
word "government." There were 1,542 "hits" in the last two years -- in
newspapers from Houston and Columbus, Des Moines and Austin,
Greensboro and San Diego, St. Louis and Seattle, Indianapolis and Palm
Beach. 

 Clearly, something is wrong.

 Too many Americans mistrust their government. And, unnecessary
government secrecy feeds this mistrust.

 What makes our country unique is its commitment to being open, to
making its leaders accountable. In a week when our thoughts turn to the
threat of terrorism -- in our own country and around the world -- it is so
important that we not retreat from that principle, that we not give in to
assaults on our democratic values. It is a time when we need to renew and
invigorate our commitment to open government. 

 Thirty years ago, the Freedom of Information Act was created to give
life to the fundamental premise of America's founding that we "meant to be
our own governors." 

 How would we do that? "By arming (our)selves with the power
knowledge gives," said James Madison.

 On July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of
Information Act with the observation that "a democracy works best when the
people have all the information that the security of the Nation permits." He
said, "No one should be able to pull the curtains of secrecy around decisions
which can be revealed without injury." 

 It was a little bit easier then. The number of FOIA requests wasn't even
recorded the first few years. In 1975, the Department of Justice received 30-
thousand requests. Compare that, if you will, with 1995 when the Justice
Department received about 125,000 FOIA and Privacy Act requests and had
the equivalent of 617 people working full-time on the requests at an annual
cost of over 35-million-dollars.

 A working reporter doesn't care how many requests we get or how much
it costs to process them. I understand that. What you care about is when
you are going to get your questions answered. That's the challenge, one that
demands real solutions.

 We have started trying to find them:

 All but eight of the Justice Department's 29 sub-parts have significantly
 reduced their backlogs. 

 The others are on a reporting system that has significantly cut backlogs
 at places like the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Bureau
 of Prisons and the U.S. Attorneys' offices.

 Using our expedited FOIA procedure for records that have been
 requested by a widespread and exceptional number of news agencies,
 we are putting some extraordinary requests to the head of the line. 
 Recent examples include: 

 - The complete transcripts of the FBI's negotiations with the Branch
 Davidians at Waco;
 - Records dealing with alleged human rights violations in Guatemala;
 - And the Justice Department's command center logs during the Ruby
 Ridge incident.

 Furthermore, we have made it a daily practice in our press office to try
 to accommodate requests from the news media for a single, easily
 retrievable document. We get it and send it to you as fast as we can. 
 While judging its releasability under FOIA and Privacy Act standards,
 we don't even put it into the FOIA system.

 We now release information on serious professional misconduct by
 Justice Department attorneys, even without a FOIA request. We have
 done that nine times in two years.

 We strongly encouraged all Federal agencies to make discretionary
 releases whenever possible, and reexamined FOIA forms and formats,
 improving nearly all of them. In fact, we were so successful, the
 Department of the Interior, the Labor Department, the Air Force and
 the Environmental Protection Agency asked us to review their forms,
 too. 

 On top of that, we are now making FOIA performance part of the job
 description of every relevant Department of Justice employee and
 rating them on how well they do.

 Is there more we can do, more that can be done with today's tight
 budgets? We are and must continue to think about ways to
 accomplish that goal.

 The core purpose of FOIA is to let people know how their government
 works. Yet, today, relatively few FOIA requests have to do with what
 the government is doing. 

 The bulk of the requests come from individuals seeking information
 that the government is merely storing -- information about a business
 competitor, or a celebrity or historic figure, or simply to satisfy
 curiosity. Since the purpose of FOIA is to show how government
 works, surely we might give some consideration to creating different
 tiers, or tracks, to give priority to requests that have a broad, public
 purpose rather than a purely private one. That is a concept we already
 apply when considering fee waivers.


 Should we give some thought to the burden we are placing on the system
with complex litigation demands? At a time when the FBI is 5.6 million
pages behind in processing FOIA requests, do we really want 29% of the
FBI's FOIA time devoted to responding to what we call "Vaughn Index"
demands, which are the detailed explanations we have to give the courts
when you sue us for withholding something.
 
 Should the size and complexity of requests be a factor? What do we do
with a request, like the one we got from a reporter in Pennsylvania last
Friday, demanding files responsive to 206 questions, some of them with
dozens of subparts? The list of questions ran 11 pages! 

 Is increased use of electronic file-keeping one way to reduce the
frustrating over-load in the future? Will direct access from your city rooms
to our clearly non-exempt files be the wave of the future?

 I am happy to announce that, within the next few days, U.S. Attorneys'
press releases anywhere in the country will be available to your reporters
through the Internet or by dialing up a Justice Department bulletin board. 
We have discussed with the FBI putting new reading-room items onto its
Internet retrieval shelves. 

 Someday soon, we will be sending our press releases directly to your
electronic mailboxes, rather than by fax machines. A delegation from ASNE
visited our technical support staff last fall and told us the sorts of things you
need. Without question, we are going to interact with one another in the
future by computer.

 That's a future that is worrisome in some respects. The Information Age
and the end of the Cold War have created new precincts in Cyberspace and
across once-closed borders. Organized crime is using computers to illegally
transfer electronic cash. Pornographers can ply their trade across invisible
borders. Computer hackers can gain unauthorized access to sensitive private
and government information. The computer age poses special challenges to
those of us in law enforcement. Will the price of direct access and easier
communication be less privacy and increased police intrusion?

 I want to take this chance to tell you about an example three weeks ago
that should reassure you that the government is proceeding in good faith to
navigate the new world of Cyberspace while accommodating Constitutional
concerns. Federal agents executed the first warrant obtained from a judge to
search a computer network run by Harvard University that had been entered
illegally by an Argentinean man intent on reaching military and NASA
computer files. 

 Working with Naval investigators and Harvard scientists, federal
prosecutors developed a computer program to recognize the intruder's
distinctive electronic footprints without reading the communications of
innocent users. In fact, out of approximately 10 million electronic messages
sorted by the computer, only two innocent communications were apparently
opened by investigators. 
 We didn't use computers to invade privacy. We used them to protect
privacy for the thousands of individuals and organizations that used that
network. 

 That is the kind of story that helps instill confidence in government and
counter distrust.

 In a week when many are noting anniversaries, I hope you will take note
of another first-year anniversary -- another anniversary of open government. 
One year ago today, on April 17, President Clinton signed the Executive
Order that will overhaul our system for classifying national security
information to lower the wall of government secrecy. 

 When he took office, the President ordered a comprehensive review of
classification policy. He concluded that it frequently distorted history,
warped intelligence estimates, hid government waste and inefficiency,
retarded scientific and academic research, and maintained a gulf between
government and governed. 


 Under the Executive Order the President signed, classified documents
over 25 years old will automatically be declassified unless they fit within very
narrow exempted categories such as weapons systems or intelligence
activities. Classifiers now have to justify what they want to classify. The
burden runs against needless or unnecessarily prolonged classification.

 Is there a connection between what the President wants done and what
ASNE believes should be done? Is there a shared vision between me and
Debra Howell and Dick Schmidt? There is. You know there is. And that's
why it is important for us to continue to work together.

 On April 14th two years ago, I talked to you about the instructions
President Clinton had issued to make the government as open as possible,
and to make disclosure the norm. I told you what we were doing to meet the
challenge. We try, every day, to keep our promises. 

 I said I would hold regular weekly news availabilities, as I had started to
do. Tomorrow, we will hold our 121st weekly news availability, 16 of which
were conducted by the Deputy or the Associate Attorney General if I was
absent. 121 sessions, open to any reporter. 

 The challenges to law enforcement are different and more complex than
they were thirty years ago when the Freedom of Information Act was passed. 
We are working hard with Congress on a bipartisan basis to outmatch the
cunning and stealth of the terrorists.

 But when we say a prayer this week for those who have lost their lives
to terror, we will honor their memory most by recommitting ourselves to two
wellsprings of our democracy -- our open government and our inquisitive
press. Against those who seek to work their will by cowardice and violence,
we will prevail. 

 I always enjoy meeting with you, and I am grateful that you invited me
to give this progress report. 

 Thank you.