The only remnant of the ambitious secrecy reform program initiated by
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan in the mid-1990s is a bill pending in Congress
called the "Public Interest Declassification Act (S. 1801)."  It would do
no more than establish an "advisory board" to "advise" on classification
and declassification policy.

The bill was the subject of a hearing Wednesday before the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Fred Thompson.  Most of the
witnesses, including Senator Moynihan, Rep. Porter Goss, historian Warren
Kimball, and former DCI James Woolsey, argued that the proposed board would
help to prioritize and limit competing declassification initiatives
("special searches").  Steven Garfinkel of the Information Security
Oversight Office astutely noted that next year "the new President will very
quickly receive conflicting advice about what should be done" with respect
to declassification, and suggested that the proposed Board could provide
reasoned judgment on this topic.  FAS testified that the Board could
usefully serve as an advocate for declassification within the executive
branch and a monitor of secrecy-related legislation in Congress.

Prepared testimony from the July 26 hearing on the Public Interest
Declassification Act is posted here:

        http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2000/index.html#declass

At the hearing, Senator Moynihan released a CIA report to Congress
(declassified last Friday) that describes and tabulates special
declassification reviews conducted by the CIA from 1993-1999.  Among the
dozens of reviews, CIA indicates that "more than 1,000 hours" have been
spent responding to congressional requests and "demands" for satellite
imagery of Mt. Ararat in Turkey and assessment of the "presence of Noah's
Ark" at that location.  Despite the level of effort, "no definitive
information [has been] identified."  The status of the review was "ongoing"
as of last year.

Thirty-three such searches were conducted in 1998-99.  "Special searches
are a growth industry," warned CIA Director of Congressional Affairs John
H. Moseman in his cover letter.

But the CIA report did not address CIA's criteria for declassification,
which are widely considered to be obsolete and self-serving.  The report is
posted here:

        http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/cia_search.html

(To "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to these occasional notices from the FAS
Project on Government Secrecy, send email to [log in to unmask]).

___________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html