Editorial: No telling what’s classified

Saturday, July 22, 2006 | 7:47 a.m.

The Defense Department misclassifies documents and keeps some secret for no good reason because its information security program is inconsistent and lacks oversight, a recent Government Accountability Office audit has found.

For its report, the watchdog arm of Congress examined just 111 documents, a tiny fraction of the roughly 13.4 million documents the Pentagon produces each year. But the results "are consistent with the weaknesses GAO found in the way DOD implements its information security program."

One significant weakness is unwarranted classifying.

In the GAO's report - first disclosed by Steven Aftergood, executive director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy - questions were raised about the classifications (confidential, secret, top secret) of 29 documents, roughly 26 percent. The GAO questioned why 13 of 17 of the documents marked "confidential" or "secret" should be classified. Even the Defense Department admitted that there had been no basis to classify five of those documents.

Further, the GAO revealed that 92 of the 111 documents had been wrongly "marked" in one way or another. Those errors included documents that omitted the required source or date of the classification or had inaccurate or incomplete instructions for declassifying the document, the study found.

The GAO also reported that only seven of 19 Defense Department components and subordinate commands perform regular - and required - self-inspection document reviews as part of the information security programs.

It cannot escape notice that the study was released amid Bush administration complaints about the media reporting classified information. The complaining seems thin given what the GAO found.

Bush's real problem is not with journalists acting as government watchdogs but with its own goal from Day One to keep the people's business under wraps, shielded from scrutiny, unencumbered by accountability - and hidden from the public.

The GAO report examined just one department - Defense - "one of the most prolific classifiers" in the federal bureaucracy. But it is yet another maddening confirmation of the Bush administration's campaign to stem the flow of government information to the public, a campaign often cloaked in post-9/11 rhetoric.

Examples litter the Bush presidency: Vice President Dick Cheney's closed-door talks with energy industry officials; President Bush's little-known use of "signing statements" to gut 750 laws approved by Congress; detaining enemy combatants hidden away in overseas prisons; and a warrantless surveillance program without true congressional oversight.

As the GAO noted, the bungling of Pentagon procedures not only leads to the unnecessary classification of documents, but it also could lead to the dangerous declassification of documents. It also impedes vital information sharing, the GAO study said.

The Defense Department should take to heart the GAO's six recommendations for better oversight and accountability. And the public should heed yet another red flag signaling a larger problem: the Bush administration's unprecedented, damaging culture of secrecy.