Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995/Title VII

TITLE VII—CLASSIFICATION MANAGEMENT

SEC. 701. CLASSIFICATION AND DECLASSIFICATION OF INFORMATION.

(a) IN GENERAL—

Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the President shall, by Executive order, provide for the classification and declassification of information. It is the sense of Congress that the Executive order should provide for the following:

(1) The qualification of information for classification only when its public disclosure would cause identifiable damage to the national security.

(2) The declassification of information if the appropriate authority within the Executive branch determines that the Government's interest in continuing to protect such information is outweighed by the public's interest in having the information made available.

(3) The automatic declassification of information that is more than 25 years old unless such information is within a category designated by the President as requiring document-by-document review to identify that information whose disclosure to unauthorized persons would clearly damage the national security.

(b) SUBMISSION TO CONGRESS; EFFECTIVE DATE—

The Executive order referred to in subsection (a) may not take effect until after 30 days after the date on which such proposed Executive order is submitted to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Government Operations of the House of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Senate.

SEC. 702. DECLASSIFICATION PLAN.

Each agency of the National Foreign Intelligence Program to which is appropriated more than $1,000,000 in the security, countermeasures, and related activities structural category for fiscal year 1995 shall allocate at least two percent of its total expenditure in this structural category for fiscal year 1995 to the classification management consolidated expenditure center, to be used for the following activities:

(1) Development of a phased plan to implement declassification guidelines contained in the Executive order which replaces Executive Order 12356. Each such agency shall provide the plan to Congress within 90 days after the beginning of fiscal year 1995 or 90 days after the publication of such replacement Executive order, whichever is later. This plan shall include an accounting of the amount of archived material, levels of classification, types of storage media and locations, review methods to be employed, and estimated costs of the declassification activity itself; as well as an assessment by the agency of the appropriate types and amounts of information to be maintained in the future, how it will be stored, safeguarded, and reviewed, and the projected costs of these classification management activities for the succeeding five years.

(2) Commencement of the process of declassification and reduction of the amount of archived classified documents maintained by each agency.

(3) Submission of a report to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate within 90 days after the end of fiscal year 1995 on the progress made in carrying out paragraph (2), with reference to the plan required by paragraph (1).