CIA Moves To Reclassify Documents In The National Archives

The CIA has been reportedly involved in a secret seven year program to reclassify more than 55,000 documents that were opened to public view in the National Archives. Yet, in many cases there seems to be no real national security issues at stake, but many cases seem to only point to CIA efforts to cover-up examples of grossly wrong judgement calls in past critical situations.

In one example, American intelligence sources wrongly concluded on Oct 12, 1950 that Chinese forces were not likely to enter the Korean War. But only two weeks later, a force of 300,000 Chinese soldiers invaded Korea and entered the war.

In other examples, many Cold War and other documents, which are very old and seemingly nearly worthless except to historians or authors, are now being reclassified as "secret" and "classified" once again.

There is no national security concerns at stake in old documents dealing with foreign policy situations long past in a quickly changing world that has altered dramaticly with so much trade with China, democratic reforms in former Communist states in Eastern Europe and other political landscape changes.

It only seems like a cult of secrecy continues to surround the CIA, who seem to guard the fact that their judgement calls are often wrong is at issue. They failed to prevent the probable transfers of 38 plane fulls of WMD chemical weapons to Syria in 2002 by Iraq, according to information given by General Georges Sada, the #2 general in Iraq's Air Force. They misjudged postwar conditions in Iraq and the strength of the insurgency.

It would be far better for the U.S. and for the CIA to be seen as often wrong in past judement calls, and for public critical opinion to force the CIA to better be able to judge the critical issues of national security importance.

Yet it is difficult to see any benefit to the CIA seeking to hide past examples that they ever absolutely wrong on judgement calls on Korea in 1950 or with the Cold War. Most normal people learn from their mistakes, not make a massive effort to hide those mistakes.

The fact that the CIA often makes terrible and bad judgement calls and opinion errors seems to be the biggest secret subject to cover-up.