The curious refusal of the Central Intelligence Agency to provide online access to its “CREST” database of declassified documents was examined last week in Mother Jones magazine.
“In a quiet, fluorescently lit room in the National Archives’ auxiliary campus in suburban College Park, Maryland, 10 miles outside of Washington, are four computer terminals, each providing instant access to the more than 10 million pages of documents the CIA has declassified since 1995. There’s only one problem: these are the only publicly available computers in the world that do so.”
See “Inside the CIA’s (Sort of) Secret Document Stash” by Bruce Falconer, Mother Jones, April 3.
A mostly favorable review of the CREST database was provided by historians David M. Barrett and Raymond Wasko in “Sampling CIA’s New Document Retrieval System: McCone’s Telephone Conversations during the Six Crises Tempest,” Intelligence and National Security, vol. 20, no. 2, June 2005, pp. 332-340 (not online).
By denying online public access to the CREST database, the Central Intelligence Agency appears to be at odds with the President’s executive order on classification. That order states (EO 13292, section 3.7): “The Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, in conjunction with those agencies that originate classified information, shall coordinate the linkage and effective utilization of existing agency databases of records that have been declassified and publicly released.”
But by refusing to place the CREST database online (or to release it to others who will do so), the CIA is undermining the “effective utilization” of this existing agency database.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.
Russia currently maintains nearly 5,460 nuclear warheads, with an estimated 1,718 deployed. This represents a slight decrease in total warheads from previous years but still positions Russia as the world’s largest nuclear power alongside the United States.
The stakes are high: how we manage this convergence will influence not only the pace of technological innovation but also the equity and sustainability of our energy future.
We’re launching an initiative to connect scientists, engineers, technologists, and other professionals who recently departed federal service with emerging innovation ecosystems across the country that need their expertise.