Obama issues Executive Order declassifying many documents fulfilling campaign promise-Politico, 12/09

• 12/29/2009, "Mystery surrounds new Obama order on classification," Politico, Josh Gerstein

"President Barack Obama has apparently issued a long-awaited executive order on classification that fulfills one of his campaign promises by setting up a National Declassification Center to oversee the release of historical documents. But the announcement, ironically, is shrouded in secrecy and confusion.

• "While the Government must be able to prevent the public disclosure of information that would compromise the national security, a democratic government accountable to the people must be as transparent as possible and must
  
• not withhold information for self-serving reasons
  
• or simply to avoid embarrassment," National Security Council official William Leary wrote in a blog post announcing the order.

Oddly, that blog post was dated and time stamped at 4:44 p.m. Monday but does not appear to have shown up on the White House website until a little before noon Tuesday. Adding to the mystery, the link to the executive order was dead at that time. Then, shortly after this reporter inquired about that dead link, the entire blog post disappeared.

• The order reportedly sets deadlines for declassification of information exempted from automatic 25-year declassification requirements and eliminates a veto the intelligence community held over declassification orders from an interagency panel that hears appeals of such cases.

Full text of the post that went down the memory hole is after the jump.

UPDATE: Leary's blog post and the order are now out of the memory hole and back on the record with a time stamp of 2:38 p.m. Tuesday, though the URL still harkens back to Monday. Apparently someone's trigger finger got a little itchy. A side note: If Obama indeed signed the order today, he must have done so in Hawaii, where he's on vacation.

Full text of the post that went down the memory hole is after the jump.

UPDATE 2: A presidential memorandum on the issue has also been released.

Promoting Openness and Accountability by Making Classification a Two-Way Street

by William H. Leary

President Obama has issued a new executive order on “Classified National Security Information” that addresses the problem of over-classification in numerous ways and will allow researchers to gain timelier access to formerly classified records. Among the major changes are the following:

• • It establishes a National Declassification Center at the National Archives to enable agency reviewers to perform collaborative declassification in accordance with priorities developed by the Archivist with input from the general public.

• • For the first time, it establishes the principle that no records may remain classified indefinitely and provides enforceable deadlines for declassifying information exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years.

• • For the first time, it requires agencies to conduct fundamental classification guidance reviews to ensure that classification guides are up-to-date and that they do not require unnecessary classification.

• It eliminates an Intelligence Community veto of certain decisions by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel that was introduced in the Bush order."...