Date: July 8, 2011 In today’s Federal Register, NARA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Declassification of National Security Information. This proposed rule would update NARA's regulations related to declassification of classified national security information in records transferred to NARA's legal custody. The rule incorporates changes resulting from issuance of Executive Order 13526, Classified National … Continue reading NARA Proposed Declassification Regulation
NDC Declassification Process – Quality Assurance
Quality control review is one of the most important parts of the NDC process. In the early days of Executive Order 12958, agencies began to expand review programs to ensure that sensitive information was not released when the automatic declassification deadline arrived. To accomplish their goals, programs were established before sufficient government wide equity recognition … Continue reading NDC Declassification Process – Quality Assurance
The Real Pentagon Papers
The pending release of the Report of the OSD Vietnam Task Force (aka the Pentagon Papers) has brought forth the question of relevancy. After all the Papers were made public 40 years ago, right? What’s the big deal? The fact of the matter is that no one, outside the people properly cleared to view Top … Continue reading The Real Pentagon Papers
310 Entries Declassified by the NDC
The NDC has released a listing of 310 separate entries that have completed declassification processing between January and May, 2011 and are now available for researcher request. Highlights include records from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Office of Secretary of Defense and Department of State.
The NDC and FOIA/MDR Requests
When NARA established the National Declassification Center (NDC) in December 2009, we included the unit that processes classified FOIA and MDR requests for accessioned Federal records. To establish the NDC and the new declassification processes, NARA applied Lean- Six-Sigma (LSS) methodology, including defining a problem, measuring output, analyzing alternatives and developing an improved “to be” … Continue reading The NDC and FOIA/MDR Requests
Pentagon Papers Release
NARA is planning a digital/textual release of the Pentagon Papers for the week of June 13, 2011. This simultaneous release will be conducted by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, and the National Declassification Center at College Park.
1st Marine Division in the “Battle of Chosin Reservoir”
Today's post comes to us from NDC blogger Neil Carmichael. The National Declassification Center's Indexing and Declassification Review division has recently finished screening 250,000 pages of United States Marine Corps records from the Korean War. The documents released include Air and Ground unit diaries, primarily between 1950 and 1953. Over 60 years ago, the 1st Marine … Continue reading 1st Marine Division in the “Battle of Chosin Reservoir”
NDC Declassification Process – Evaluation
As I mentioned in my previous post, the biggest interagency issue related to the new process was to follow the President’s direction, issued in a memo that accompanied Executive Order 13526 (http://www.archives.gov/isoo/pdf/implementing-memo.pdf), and apply risk management to the declassification process. So why is risk management needed? First, we need to examine who is performing the … Continue reading NDC Declassification Process – Evaluation
NDC Declassification Process – Overview
Hello NDC blog readers. In recent weeks there have have been several discussions with people in the declassification world and the general public about the declassification process and how it has changed since the NDC was established. We at the NDC are working to make our process as transparent as possible to help people understand how we perform … Continue reading NDC Declassification Process – Overview
Pentagon Papers Project Update
I want to update everyone on our progress on this project with the great news that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has declassified the information of interest to them in the Report of the Vietnam Study Task Force. Since the Report was an OSD product, they retained considerable interest in every volume … Continue reading Pentagon Papers Project Update