Bush Administration Classified Over 20 Million Documents

By Pete Yost, Associated Press

There were 20.5 million decisions to classify government secrets last year, and a report to the president found serious shortcomings in the process.

The Information Security Oversight Office said more than 1 in 10 documents it reviewed lacked a basis for classification, “calling into question the propriety” of the decisions to place them off limits to public disclosure.

“The high error rate,” the ISOO said in its annual review, can only be addressed by a multifaceted effort and continuous oversight.

The report comes as the office of Vice President Dick Cheney is refusing to cooperate with the office of the National Archives. The report noted that Cheney’s office “did not report data to ISOO this year.”

Executive branch agencies give the ISOO data on how much material they classify and declassify. Cheney’s office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped.

(Original Article)