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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies have been secretly removing from public access at the National Archives thousands of historical documents that were available for years, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the CIA and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton, the Times said on its Web site.

The secret program accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the September 11 attacks, according to archives records, the paper said.

It came to light after intelligence historian Matthew Aid noticed dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves, the Times said.



for the rest of article...http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArtic ... CHIVES.xml



I found this article very interesting. I wonder what documents are being reclassified. Does anyone know anything more?

Documents are not allowed to be pulled from the National Archives all the time, that have been released to the public. This can be very frustrating to researchers who have started their work, and then return to find that they have "disappeared." I am glad one historian finally complained about it-most of us are afraid if we complain we will continue to not have research material pulled for us. Since my primary research is through the Archives, I am careful who I complain to, or will not have anything good come up for months.

One case I worked on for a year, mysteriously disappeared for five years. Ha! I asked for it everytime I went there, knowing it would not be given to me again-until five years later I was allowed to pull it up. And this stuff was 100 years old, not anything recent. They didn't like the implications from the research. As a historian, I say, I write what I find, to the best of my ability.

Now sometimes the documents could be sent to other agencies, such as the Supreme Court, Court of Claims, Congress, etc. The documents can be there for many years before they are returned to the National Archives and the general public.

You can always try a search for these particular documents through the National Archives website. www.nara.gov to see if they are supposed to be available to the general public.

Wow chronsi, what do you do research on. I know your a teacher, and a historian too maybe.

This article, just had me wondering what now needs to be classified that was once declassified.

Sheryl wrote: I wonder what documents are being reclassified. Does anyone know anything more?The original source for the Reuter's report is http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179/ at a guess. There's a lot of detail there.

Thanks spot. The link was really helpful.