Nuclear Weapons Secrecy Policy Relaxed, a Bit

The fact that a now-retired nuclear weapon was once located at a now-closed location in the United States shall no longer be considered classified information, the Department of Defense announced last week.

This may seem so trivial and insignificant as to be hardly worth deciding or announcing, but it could have positive practical consequences for current and future declassification efforts.

“The repeated discoveries of this kind of [information] in numerous records [have] impeded the prompt declassification of many documents,” the National Declassification Center said last week, praising the move.

So with the categorical declassification of such information, the declassification of some historical records should now be facilitated and accelerated.

“Secrecy itself is more dangerous than the possession of atomic weapons,” said Edward Teller in a 1989 presentation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Department of Energy posted a transcript of his remarks last week.