Those special
requests from administration officials and members of Congress have
asked CIA declassifiers to search for documents on everything from UFOs
to murdered churchwomen in El Salvador to the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy.
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, and
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, have sponsored
legislation to create a nine-member board to prioritize such special
requests.
"The
purpose of the bill is to bring some order to the chaos," Goss said
at a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on the legislation.
He said he would seek passage of the legislation this year.
"It's a
push and shove, it's who has the sharper elbows," Goss said. Right
now, a special request for a search of documents by the person with the
most political clout is likely to be put on top of the pile, he added.
Streamline
responses
Such requests
at times end up resulting in duplicative work for the CIA declassifiers
because they are made by different people at different times, Goss and
Moynihan said. The proposed board would aim to reduce repetitive
requests and streamline agency responses.
The CIA's 230
to 300 employees at its "declassification factory" are
stretched by the sheer amount of records they must review, Moynihan
said. The spy agency has in the past said it processes about 8 million
pages of classified records a year.
Aside from the
special requests, the declassification efforts include a presidential
executive order requiring information older than 25 years be
declassified unless the government decides it needs to stay secret.
Also the
public requests declassification of documents under the Freedom of
Information Act and the Privacy Act.
The CIA budget
for declassification efforts itself is classified.
Included with
Moynihan's testimony was a letter from CIA's director of congressional
affairs, John Moseman, on the impact of special searches and a list
detailing the types of searches that have been requested.
The list and
letter, dated Oct. 18, 1999, were declassified last Friday, July 21.
"In sum, special searches are a growth industry and compete with
the mandates of the many existing information review and release
programs," Moseman said.
Search for
UFOs and more
From 1993 to
September 1999, the CIA conducted nine separate special searches for
documents on El Salvador, mainly related to four churchwomen murdered
there in 1980. There were 12 on Guatemala related to the deaths of
several Americans and for records on the 1954 CIA-backed coup, the list
said.
CIA Director
George Tenet requested a search for documents related to convicted spy
Jonathan Pollard on the damage done to national security by his
espionage activities.
The request
was made in late 1998 when President Bill Clinton, during the Wye River
Middle East peace conference, said he would review the case of Pollard,
a former naval intelligence official jailed for life in 1986 for selling
military secrets to Israel.
Israel has
been seeking Pollard's release, reportedly as recently as the just-ended
Camp David summit that collapsed. Tenet has opposed releasing the spy.
Other special
searches were done in response to congressional requests for documents
on parapsychology studies, and satellite imagery on the presence of
Noah's Ark, on which after spending 1,000 hours the CIA concluded
"no definitive information identified."
A CIA director
also requested information on UFO sightings and Roswell, New Mexico, a
subject on which more than 2,700 pages have been released, according to
the list.
Several items
for which special search requests had been made were blacked out on the
list.
