OTHER VIEW: Letting transparency leak through

Editorials

January 10, 2010

Anonymous The Tonawanda News Sun Jan 10, 2010, 12:07 AM EST

Government, no matter how free and democratic, inevitably creates bureaucracies that want to keep as much information secret as possible.

Even if it’s a half-century old.

The protective mentality has kept secret some 400 million pages of government documents covering the Cold War-era — until now.

Last week, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that will clear the way for the documents’ release, and he set up guidelines that will allow for fewer obstacles when groups or individuals try to get access to historical government documents.

The Cold War information will be a treasure trove for historians and researchers, providing more details on the 1985 spy ring headed by John Walker, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Berlin wall.

It’s a good move by a president who as a candidate promised unprecedented transparency in his administration — a promise that has fallen short of fulfillment.

Candidate Obama promised to set up a Web-based system in which the public would have at least five days to review proposed legislation before it came to his desk for signature.

That system has been spotty, at best, with most bills enacted without easy public access to them.

Still, his executive order to release the Cold War documents is a victory for groups who have for many years been waging legal challenges to have the information released more quickly and easily.

It would have been even better had the president ordered a “bulk declassification” of the documents, something President Clinton did with World War II documents. Under that system, the documents are released without further costly delays in reviewing them.

There is no good national security reason for further review of the Cold War documents. Several government agencies have, for more than a decade, been reviewing them. If there were serious national security risks — something unlikely in such old documents — those concerns should have already been addressed.

Obama also ordered all agencies to update their guidelines for releasing documents to make it easier for the public to get information with less delay. And he changed current rules that allow agency heads to veto release of documents on their own, instead leaving the final decision to the president.

The order is a step in the right direction, but even more should be done. Most importantly, the president needs to ensure he follows up on this pledge to make documents more accessible and to intensify his efforts overall to make his administration more transparent.

— The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.

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