December 08, 2004

Statement on the Intelligence Declassification Provision in the Intelligence Reform Bill

M. President, I wish to commend Senators Collins and Lieberman for their leadership in working round the clock for months to translate the key recommendations of the 9-11 Commission into reality. Thanks to their tireless and bipartisan effort, I and my colleagues today can point to a provision in the Intel Reform Bill that will clear the fog of unnecessary secrecy that has for too long clouded our national intelligence picture. As the principal sponsor of this bipartisan provision, which will establish for the first time an appeals procedure that members of Congress may use regarding the classification of materials for national security purposes, I wish to explain how I envision this new process working. The power to classify documents as secret is one of the most powerful tools in American government, and it seems to be very much in vogue. Over-classification of documents is now the rule rather than the exception. Documents are sometimes classified for political reasons rather than to protect national security interests. Last year alone, the federal government spent $6.5 billion creating 14.3 million new classified documents. That is double the number of documents 10 years ago. This awesome power should be used judiciously, and it surely should not be the subject of old fashioned horse-trading, as it was last summer during the preparation of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-Iraq War intelligence. Last summer the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I serve with my co-authors, spent more than six weeks arm-wrestling with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over how much of the report on pre-Iraq War intelligence would be made public. Originally, the Agency wanted to black out more than half of the report. In the end, "only 20 percent" of the report was blacked out. At that time there was no independent body to which the Committee members could turn to find out what should and should not be classified for national security purposes. That is precisely the problem addressed by the provision crafted by Senators Lott, Bob Graham, Snowe and myself. Our provision will give Congress for the first time a means of appealing classification decisions.The provision gives Congress the authority to appeal classification decisions to an independent standing body, the Public Interest Declassification Board. This Board is made up of nine members with expertise in national security and related areas; five are appointed by the President and four by the bipartisan leadership of the Senate and House. Under the amendments made by Section 1102, when any member of Congress asks the Board to declassify a document or materials, the Board "shall advise the originators of the request in a timely manner whether the Board intends to conduct such review." This means that if I or another member of the Senate were to ask the Board to determine whether a document is properly classified for national security purposes, the Board must respond in a timely manner. "Timely" is defined as "early" or "soon." It is my expectation that whether it is a member of Congress or a Committee seeking the Board's decision on the proper classification of information, the Board will get back to the requester expeditiously. I am of the view that the problems in our intelligence community will not be addressed until the problems in the national security classification system are addressed. Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission, said that three-quarters of the classified material he reviewed for the Commission should not have been classified in the first place. Now, as the Senate acts on the conference report that strongly reflects the 9/11 Commission recommendations, it only makes sense to include this provision. I have no illusions that this classification appeals mechanism will abolish the strongly rooted institutional bias in favor of over-classification, but taken in conjunction with the overall review of the standards used to classify information contained in other sections of the Conference Report, it is a very sound first step. I am grateful to Senator Lott, my principal cosponsor, for championing this matter in conference. He and his staff worked non-stop to preserve this provision. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of Senator Bob Graham, another conferee, and his staff to defend our work. I ask unanimous consent that my statement be printed in the record.