10 August 1997

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   The New York Times, August 10, 1997, p. 28.

   State Dept. Historians Say C.I.A. Withholds Decades-Old
   Paper

   Washington, Aug. 9 (AP)--A Government-appointed panel of
   historians says that stonewalling by the Central
   Intelligence Agency on the declassification of decades-old
   documents is making an official United States diplomatic
   history "the target of ridicule and scorn."

   In a report to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright,
   the panel said several volumes of the department's
   comprehensive diplomatic history remained on hold because
   the C.I.A. had failed to release information no longer
   deemed secret.

   The panel, appointed by the State Department, said the
   problem "must be laid at the doorstep of the intelligence
   community, primarily the Central Intelligence Agency."

   The report noted that the panel called the Advisory
   Committee on Historical and Diplomatic Documentation, had
   been established in the late 1980's after an
   "embarrassment" that resulted from the publishing of an
   official history on United States-Iranian relations that
   made no mention of well-known covert activity by the agency
   in Iran in the 1950's.

   In unusually blunt language. the panel said the agency had
   released partial information on only 2 of the 11 covert
   activities it acknowledged from the cold war, those
   concerning Guatemala and British Guiana.

   "For the editors of the series to pretend such actions
   and/or policies did not happen makes the volumes and the
   Department of State the target of ridicule and scorn," the
   panel said.

   The panel's report, written by its chairman, Prof. Warren
   F. Kimball, was dated June 26 and is to be made public next
   week on a State Department Internet web site.

   Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the C.I.A., suggested on
   Friday that the panel's criticism might be outdated because
   "over the last few years, there has been a revolution in
   the way intelligence records are researched for
   declassification."

   New procedures are resulting in more releases of previously
   classified material, Mr. Mansfield said. But he noted that
   even documents relating to operations from the 1950's could
   contain sensitive information that must remain classified.

   "The reason why information would be withheld concerns
   protection of sources and methods," Mr. Mansfield said.

   The panel's report to Ms. Albright said it was not seeking
   to release sensitive information.

   "But we are firmly convinced that the basic outlines of our
   30-year-old foreign policy and how we chose to implement it
   can be told to the American public without fear of hurting
   living people or damaging current policy," the panel said.

   The panel said several volumes of the official history,
   "Foreign Relations of the United States," now "stand in
   never-never land." The panel said it "is forced to
   contemplate recommending against publication."

   Ms. Albright has not yet responded to the report, the State
   Department's history office said.

   The report comes weeks after the intelligence agency
   acknowledged that it had destroyed some records of covert
   activities undertaken in the 1950's and 1960's. It said the
   records had been destroyed to clear shelf space, not to
   conceal agency activities. The agency recently touted its
   release of documents relating to Guatemala in the late
   1950's, but the panel said that material represented only
   "a small portion" of the total record.

   [End]