Offtopic? Not in view of how easily the editors here severely criticize the
CIA, while having performed such gymnastics to denounce the SJ Merc
CIAcocaine series. One might suspect that such journals as the NYT actually
had a special phone line letting them know what to do.

No Job for the CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency has a way of exceeding the
worst expectations about its behavior. After stalling on the
declassification of mountains of secret papers about its past actions, the
agency now concedes that many of the documents were destroyed by
protective officials several decades ago. The CIA has clearly forfeited
the right to manage the declassification of its records.
That job should be turned over to an independent body.
This past week the CIA released a small stack of documents
about its role in the 1954 coup that toppled the elected leader of
Guatemala and installed a murderous military dictatorship. The papers
include some previously unknown plans for assassinations that officials
insist were never carried out. The agency promises more Guatemala
records in the months ahead. But the pace of this exercise has been
glacial, and many of the documents made available this past week were
heavily excised to shield information already in the public record.
Other early agency operations will never yield their secrets.
Only a few dozen pages remain from the files about the 1953 coup in
ban that put Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi back in power. Nick
Cullather, a historian who worked for the agency in 1992 and 1993,
reported this past week that records of covert agency operations in
Indonesia and Guyana had been destroyed. No one apparently
bothered to tell CIA Directors Robert Gates and James Woolsey, who
had publicly promised ambitious efforts to declassify the agency's
records.
The ClA's fight against openness started long before Mr. Gates
or Mr. Woolsey ran the agency. The CLS has stubbornly resisted cooperating
in the preparation of the government's own histories of American
foreign relations.
The agency was forced by Congress to establish an internal
Historical Review Panel to propose declassifications, but the group has
had little influence and did not even meet from 1991 to 1993. All
records from the agency's directorate of operations are exempt from
NFreedom of Information requests. Many of the documents the CLA
has made public over the years are meaningless because so much
information is blacked out.
Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihatl and Jesse Helms have
proposed the establishment of an interagency board to manage the
declassification of all government records. This would help but is likely
to leave individual agencies with too much control over what
information is made public.
A more decisive remedy is needed for the CIA. Either the
board proposed by the two senators or another body made up of
historians and other informed citizens ought to control the
declassification of CIA materials. The agency can be consulted and its
interests honored in cases where secrecy is required, but the impulse
should be to declassify whenever possible.
Congress should also remove the exemption of the operations
directorate from declassification. b addition the CIA must comply with
laws requiring that its documents be turned over periodically to the
National Archives. The destruction of historical records bespeaks a
contempt for the principles of democracy. Unfortunately, that is
nothing new at the CIA. THE NEW YORK TIMES.