One day, when historians look back on the debacle of the Bush Presidency, I imagine that they will remark on the penchant of administration officials for secrets and lies. I imagine that these historians will cull through reams of official documents in making their case. I imagine these documents will have been made available through long-established declassification protocols and as legislated by the Freedom of Information Act. I imagine that, in a democracy, the release of such material is uniformly viewed as both essential and desirable. I imagine wrong.

As reported yesterday by Scott Shane in the New York Times, and picked up by the International Herald Tribune among others, the U.S. government has a secret program to reclassify previously declassified documents. This nefarious sleight of hand has apparently been going on for years:

In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have removed from public access thousands of historical documents that had been available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassifed pages began in 1999, when the CIA and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office, especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy—governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved—it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives’ open shelves. more…

I suspect, had Mr. Aid not had the presence of mind to notice this discrepancy and then to report it, we would likely be none the wiser. Just as, had news of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of American citizens not leaked out, we would be unaware of that program. It is frightening to bear witness to this steady erosion of our liberties and to the arrogant mindset that spawns such. One can only wonder what else is going on behind closed doors in the so-called interest of national security. Now, will we ever know?