Mr. CLARKE: They misuse classification to prevent public examination, congressional examination. They even misuse classification frankly to cover up their own mistakes.
MARTIN: Is that something you saw?
Mr. CLARKE: Oh yeah.
MARTIN: Can you give me a couple examples?
Mr. CLARKE: Well, no, 'cause it's classified. See, that's the whole problem.
MARTIN: The data on classification is murky, so it's hard to measure how much it's changed since 9/11. But there is something called the Information Security Oversight Office - a government classification watchdog agency - and according to the office, there's been close to a 25 percent increase in the number of original classification decisions from 2009 to 2010. The agency's 2010 report to the president says, quote, "The large number of original classification actions is of concern, particularly at the Departments of State, Justice, and Army," end quote. Because it's hard to know how many of those bits of information met the standard for classification in the first place.
Mr. J. WILLIAM LEONARD (Former Director, Information Security Oversight Office): This is a system that's out of control.
MARTIN: J. William Leonard was the head of the classification oversight agency from 2002 to 2008.
Mr. LEONARD: You know, there's three million people with a security clearance of some sort in this country. And if they see day in, day out, you know, trivial, meaningless material with these sort of controls on it, then that's the definition of chaos.
MARTIN: Chaos because if virtually everything is classified, intelligence officials are stuck trying to sort the marginally important information from the truly important information. So that's one way government agencies misuse secrecy - to avoid sharing intelligence with other government agencies the problem identified after 9/11. But in a broader sense, information is classified to keep it from the public.
