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Classified Information: Volume Could Be Reduced by Changing Retention Policy

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Report Type Reports and Testimonies
Report Date May 24, 1993
Report No. NSIAD-93-127
Subject
Summary:

The reason that the U.S. government maintains such a large volume of classified information--some dating to before World War II--is that declassification has been unnecessarily delayed. According to the General Services Administration, government officials exempted most material from the automatic declassification procedures because they believed that the prescribed maximum period was too short. Classifiers continue to unnecessarily retain classified material by not specifying a date or event for automatic declassification. As a result, most national security information will not be available to the public for at least 30 years. In other cases, classified documents have been erroneously marked. This has been a major problem at the State Department, where officials have been classifying most documents in full rather than designating those portions that actually contain classified information.

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