We were sad to learn, belatedly, of the recent deaths of two familiar figures in the rather small world of government secrecy policy.
Jeanne Schauble, the longtime director of declassification at the National Archives, died last October. She helped oversee and implement the declassification of more than a billion pages of historical records since 1995. Her NARA colleague Michael Kurtz said last year that “she set a high standard for government service.”
Michael Resnick was Senior Director of Information Sharing Policy at the White House until his death from cancer in February. If the current policy on Controlled Unclassified Information is not a disaster — and so far, it’s not — that is largely because Mr. Resnick was willing to engage in sometimes heated discussions with public interest groups and to reconsider his own position.
As far as we could tell, no obituaries for Ms. Schauble or Mr. Resnick appeared in any national newspaper. They weren’t famous. But they were honest, honorable and skilled public servants. Anyone who crossed their paths will remember them.
Wildland firefighters manage, suppress, and prescribe fires on our nation’s public lands, protecting all of us. Yet it is becoming ever clearer that we as a nation are failing to protect them.
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The Trump administration has often cited consolidation as a path to efficiency. But history shows that USDA reorganizations have weakened, not strengthened, the agency’s capacity.
Grace Wickerson, the Federation of American Scientists’ Senior Manager, Climate and Health, today accepted a national recognition, the “Grist 50” award, bestowed by the editorial board of Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization.