Ms. Mazer is an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department who was appointed by President Clinton to Chair the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel. She spoke on November 2 at a joint CIA-DOE classification management conference at the headquarters building of the National Reconnaissance Office. We are keeping classified categories of information that everyone already knows. We celebrate our openness. In fact, it is unnecessary secrecy that is timid and cowardly.
Openness is courageous.
Be as open as you responsibly can. The CIA has refused to declassify the total budget request for intelligence, asserting on November 23 that to do so would mean the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods. This nonsensical assertion will be resisted. From a national security point of view, the size of the budget request is less sensitive than the actual appropriation, which has previously been disclosed, noted Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, who is representing FAS in a FOIA lawsuit seeking disclosure of the budget request. In a largely unsung success story, the volume of declassification activity under President Clinton's Executive Order 12958 reached an all-time record high for the second year in a row, according to the Information Security Oversight Office's 1997 Report to the President , released in November.