I am pleased to have been asked to address this meeting this morning to share my thoughts on the need to radically re-structure our system of declassifying documents that have been thought to be related to national security. Every choice regarding declassification requires intelligent resolution of the conflicts between the "right of the public to know" and the “right of the nation to protect itself.” A recent experience of mine in regard to the declassification of historical material may illuminate the problems that can arise.

During my years as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1961-1971), predecessor of the Department of Energy, I maintained a daily journal. The core of the journal was a diary, much of which I wrote at home each evening. (This continued a habit I had started at the age of 14.) The diary was supplemented by copies of correspondence, announcements, minutes of meetings, and other relevant documents that crossed my desk each day. Both in the diary and the supporting documents, rigorous attention was given to excluding any subject matter that could be considered classified information under standards of the day. My purpose was to provide for historians and other scholars a record that might not be available elsewhere of what occurred at high levels of government regarding the AEC’s important areas of activity.

Illustrative of the general recognition that my journal was unclassified was the fact that in 1965, the AEC historian microfilmed for public access in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson libraries, portions that correspond to those presidencies. To assure myself further that the journal contained no classified material, I had it checked by the AEC Division of Classification during the summer and fall of 1971 just prior to my departure from the AEC. It was cleared, virtually without deletions. (Unfortunately, I received no written confirmation of this action which is perhaps understandable due to the obvious unclassified origin of the material.) It was known that neither my Berkeley office nor my home had any provision for the protection of classified material, and the fact that the AEC saw fit to ship the journal to those places is a clear indication that the AEC regarded the journal as an unclassified document.

The office and home copies of the journal remained accessible to scholars for the ensuing twelve years. Then came the problems beginning in 1985. My cleared journal, over my vehement protests, underwent prolonged, multiple classification reviews. When the “sanitized” version was returned, it had been subjected to about 1,000 classification actions. These included the entire removal of about 500 documents for review by other U.S. agencies or, in a few cases, by the British. My journal was finally reproduced in January 1989 (PUB-625, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Technical Information Department) in 25 volumes, averaging about 700 pages each, many of them defaced with classification markings and containing large gaps where deletions had been made. In June 1992 a 26th volume was added. It contained a batch of documents initially taken away for classification review and subsequently returned to me, with many deletions, after the production of the other 25 volumes in January 1989. (Some other removed documents have still not been returned.)

This, then, is a summary narrative of the rocky voyage of my daily journal amid the shoals of multiple classification reviews. Those interested in a more detailed account can find it among the daily entries in my journal for the period after I left the AEC. This is available in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and has fortunately not yet been subjected to classification review.

What is to be concluded about this sorry tale? One conclusion I have reached is that the security classification of information became in the 1980s, an arbitrary, capricious, and frivolous process, almost devoid of objective criteria. Witness the fact that the successive reviews of my journal at different places and by different people resulted in widely varying results in the types and number of deletions made or documents removed. Furthermore, some of the individual classification actions seem utterly ludicrous. These include my description of one of the occasions when I accompanied one of my children on a “trick or treat” outing on a Halloween evening, and my account of my wife Helen’s visit to the Lake Country in England. One would have to ask how publication of these bits of family lore would adversely affect the security of the United States. A particular specialty of the reviewers was to delete from the journal many items that were already part of the public record. These included material published in my 1981 book, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban. Another example concerned the code names of previously conducted nuclear weapons tests. These were deleted almost everywhere they appeared regardless of the fact that in January 1985 the Department of Energy had issued a report (NVO-209, Revision 5) listing, with their code names, all “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 through December 1984.” A third category of deletions concerned entries that might have been politically or personally embarrassing to individuals or groups but whose publication would not in any way threaten U.S. national security. In fact, I would go so far as to contend that hardly any of the approximately 1,000 classification actions (removals of documents or deletions within documents) taken so randomly by the various reviewers could be justified on legitimate national security grounds.

Consistent with this belief, I have requested repeatedly throughout this difficult time that a copy of my journal as originally prepared, i.e., prior to all the classification reviews, be kept on file somewhere. I had in mind that there might come a day when a more rational approach to secrecy might prevail and permit wider access, especially to historians, of the complete record. There are indications that, especially with the end of the Cold War, such an era may be at hand or rapidly approaching. I am pleased to say that I recently learned that DOE has agreed to transfer the unexpurgated copy of my journal to the Library of Congress, where it will be secured in a classified area and where, I am hopeful, it will be subjected to regular review for further more sensible declassifications.

I would like to emphasize that I received fine and sympathetic treatment from many in the DOE who made it clear to me that they were not in agreement with the treatment accorded me and my journal during the process recounted above. In fact, more than one person in DOE has told me informally, that evidence does indeed exist verifying that my journal did indeed receive a clearance before my departure from the AEC in 1971.

Although I have in general received sympathetic treatment, I cannot help but note that this treatment has produced quite different conclusions at different periods in the country’s history. Actually, the Atomic Energy Commission, from its beginning in 1947, initiated and executed an excellent progressive program of declassification with an enlightened regard for the need of such information in an open, increasingly scientific society. By the 1960s, this program was serving our country very well. Unfortunately, during the 1980s, the program had retrogressed to the extent of reversing many earlier declassification actions. Fortunately, the present situation is very much improved so we can look forward to the future with considerable optimism.

Those now in charge of classification should have an appreciation of the need, in our open society, to publish all scientific and political information that has no adverse national security effect (realistically defined). Surely this can be accomplished by a revised method that is much more simple and capable of much more rapid action than the complicated system that is being considered, or debated, here today. Why can’t we declassify everything except the minuscule fraction (less than 1% of the total?) of information that is directly related to the design, building, and delivery of nuclear weapons? As a start, why can’t we immediately and automatically declassify everything (except the weapons information) that was written 15 or 20 or 25 years ago? Such a program would once again serve our country very well.