Intelligence: January 26, 2000

Archives

The Clinton Administration has admitted to Congress what has long been charged, that its overly aggressive campaign to declassify historical papers during 1995-98 had in fact mistakenly released more than 1,000 documents including nuclear weapons secrets. The Administration, however, insisted that while these secret documents were inadvertently made available to researchers, only one of the documents was actually seen by anyone without a security clearance before the mistake was discovered and the papers were returned to classified status. The documents in question originated in the old Atomic Energy Commission, and were "lost in the shuffle" when this was merged into the Department of Energy. The 14,890 pages had been sent to various other departments which, not knowing that they were secret, placed them in the National Archives for public review. Many of these included details on early bomb-making programs that could be invaluable to a nation trying to build its first nuclear weapon. --Stephen V Cole

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contributions. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close