 Okay. Okay, sure. Welcome. And thank you for joining today's PIDB virtual public meeting. With that, I'll turn the conference over to Robert Farr, PIDB staff. Please go ahead. Robert, please unmute your line if you want to unmute. Good afternoon and welcome one and all to the first public session in 2022 of the Public Interests Declassification Board. And I'm introducing Mark Bradley, the PIDB executive secretary to begin the meeting. Thank you, Robert. Good afternoon. My name is Mark A Bradley and I serve as the executive secretary for the Public Interest Declassification Board. Welcome to the PIDB spring virtual public meeting. Before turning the meeting over to the PIDB chair, as we're coming, I wanted to quickly highlight a few activities here at the National Archives where our office is located. First, some very good news. The research rooms here in the Washington, D.C. area and in the regional archives and presidential libraries are open by appointment. So please visit the National Archives homepage at archives.gov slash research to learn more about the public health precautions we are taking and requirements for using the research rooms. Second, the museums and exhibits at the presidential libraries and here in Washington, D.C. are open to the public. Please visit the National Archives homepage to learn more about the hours of operation and other information to plan your visit. That said, I would be remiss if I did not mention on the penultimate day of celebrating Women's History Month at the temporary exhibit rightfully hers, celebrating the 100th anniversary of women receiving the right to vote will close here in Washington, D.C. on April 10th. Lastly, April 1st is coming Friday is a big day for the National Archives. On this day, the National Archives will make the 1950 census available to the public on a dedicated website at archives.gov slash 1950 census. It will provide a snapshot of what life is like with 152 million people who are included and increase the knowledge of this period of our American history. With that, welcome. And Ezra, over to you, please. Please unmute your line, Ezra. Looks like you're on mute. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our first public meeting of 2022. We want to use this opportunity to first I'll introduce our new board members. Carter Burwell was recently appointed by the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And Laura Devonis, who joins our board again, was appointed by President Biden in November. We're very happy to have both of them join the board and they'll bring a wealth of experience. I'd also like to congratulate the co-chair, Alyssa Starzak, on her reappointment by Senator Schumer last month. So today we'll discuss our work plans for the coming year. It's a very ambitious program that we've laid out, but there is an opportunity for the PIDB to help improve public access to important records and help the government modernize the classification system. Towards the end of the meeting, we'll also have time to answer public questions. We've received many questions in advance of the meeting, but if there are additional questions, please feel free to email them to PIDBatnara.gov. Again, that's PIDBatnara.gov and we'll do our best to get to them. And if we can't answer them today, we'll be having a blog post in the coming days with answers to questions we didn't reach. With that, I'll now introduce each of the members who will both give an introduction, talk about their priorities, and move through the board's agenda for the year. First, we're going to go to Carter Burwell, the board's newest member, and he'll be talking about how the board is going to prioritize the release of 9-11 commission records for declassification in the coming year. Carter? Thanks, Ezra. And I'd like to kind of begin by thanking, you know, Senator McConnell for the opportunity to serve on the board and really thank the staff of the board for helping me to get up to speed and learn and so grateful and honored to be a part of the organization. I'm an attorney at a law firm, Devoys and Plimpton. I joined that firm roughly a year ago after 15 years of service across the federal government in a variety of roles, including national security at the Treasury Department as a staffer in the Senate and the Department of Justice. I'm really pleased to be a part of the board and, you know, to get to be involved in protecting and supporting and defending the national security of this country, not just, you know, by protecting sources and methods like, you know, members of the intelligence community like to focus on, but also by giving the American people faith and confidence that the government is doing its best to protect and defend this country and our civil liberties against, you know, as we said in our oaths, all its enemies, you know, foreign and domestic. So it's a great privilege and honor to be with you guys today and thanks for your kindness and consideration as I've just joined the board. You know, I'd like to make a few comments about prioritizing the declassification of records relating to the September 11 attacks. And here, you know, I just kind of note that this is a little bit personal for me as well. I had the great honor and privilege of working to support the prosecution of those individuals who were directly responsible for those attacks. And also other outcaded terrorists when I was working at the Department of Justice. You know, when I was in the Senate, I really had the honor and privilege of working with some of the representatives of the families of the victims of 9-11 in their enduring and long search for justice for those attacks. And I still teach a seminar at George Mason Law School about the 9-11 attacks. And I really rely on the 9-11 commission report in teaching that course. And it's really one of the great and most enduring government reports. And the folks who put that together did a wonderful job. And there are more records that need to be made public. Those records are incredibly important for our history and for our future. One of the core objectives of the 9-11 commission was to document exactly what happened, leaning up to the attacks and what happened immediately afterwards so that the American people would know exactly what was going on. And, you know, as Rhett and I both had the privilege of serving in the National Security Council and being a part of some of those high-level meetings, I'm still just shocked and floored that the National Security Council on September 4th of 2001 had a principles committee meeting on Al Qaeda. So just a week before the attack, you know, the National Security Council had the most high-level meeting they could on Al Qaeda. And the American people deserve to know about this, and we need to get these records declassified. You know, the commission recognized the importance of learning from the past, learning from our mistakes, and using that knowledge as a basis for developing new policies and procedures to protect and defend our national security. The 9-11 commission is long advocated for the declassification of the information it gathered and used in writing its report. The PIDB agrees that these records should be declassified. The president signed an executive order last year on the subject, and this is a good first start to prioritize the declassification review of some of those records. However, other important information that's part of the commission's records has not been declassified, and that includes interviews with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, President Clinton, interviews with other key national security leaders and counterterrorism officials, daily assessments from the president's daily brief and other intelligence products. These records too must be prioritized for declassification. It's my view that this is all part of the path of holding the perpetrators of those attacks accountable. It's part of the path of giving justice to the victims, and it's part of the path for letting the American people know exactly what was going on and giving the American people more faith and confidence in what the federal government is doing to protect and defend our national security. So in the end, I'd like to say thanks again to Senator McConnell. I'd like to thank the other members of the board for their gracious welcome and look forward to working with them. And most importantly, I'd like to thank the faithful servants who are part of the staff of the committee of the board for helping me to join and demonstrating what core commitment they have to this process. So thank you very much. Thank you, Carter. Next, let me introduce you to Paul Noel Cretien. Paul Noel is an attorney who retired from a long career at the Central Intelligence Agency. More than any other member on our board, because of his experience at CIA and information management, Paul Noel understands the challenges of reviewing information subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, mandatory declassification reviews, and conducting declassification reviews. This was appointed by President Trump in December 2020. Paul Noel? Thank you, Ezra. I worked as a career federal employee for over 25 years at the Department of Justice and at the CIA, where I held many positions involving the classification or declassification of sensitive records. Serving on the public interest declassification board is very interesting and rewarding for me because I apply my background to the important topics it faces, like the President John F. Kennedy assassination act records collection. And on this, I'd like to say there's tremendous historical interest in the JFK act records inserting the national tragedy of the assassination of our president. So Congress in 1992 created this collection of records because of their historical significance and wanted to release all the records concerning the assassination, unless it was a really substantial identifiable harm that the release of the record would cause. So they set a very strict standard in the JFK act. Nevertheless, the declassification of records has been slow and uneven. So last September, the board wrote to President Biden and unanimously advocated for the, quote, maximum public release, unquote, of the withheld JFK act documents. We urge that there not be another multi-year postponement of the release of these records. As we know, most of these records are 50 to 60 years old. On October 22nd, 2021, President Biden issued a presidential memorandum with clear instructions and directions to all executive branch agencies on how to process the remaining JFK act records. This memorandum set very strict standards that require far more to be released than what the intelligence community or law enforcement agencies would normally declassify or release under the Freedom of Information Act or similar release statute. President Biden's memorandum also requires the agreement of NARA and a second agency before material can be withheld. This requirement for concurrence of two agencies removes an institutional bias and will lead to more declassification and release. We believe, given these presidential requirements and the strength of the law, that the vast majority of the roughly 13,000 records that were still withheld in 2021 will be released. In fact, several thousand documents have been released in the past four months and now there are fewer than 10,000. By the end of this year, we expect that only a few records will remain classified and those will be tightly redacted. The president's memo specifics are that NARA and the agencies who have the documents will conduct an intensive one-year review through December 15. Any information an agency proposes for continued postponement beyond December 15 must be limited to the absolute minimum under the statutory standard. An agency cannot continue to redact information unless the redaction is necessary to prevent an identifiable harm to one of four areas, military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations. That is of such gravity that it outweighs the significant public interest in disclosure. NARA will review each proposed redaction no later than September 1, 2022 in consultation with one of the four agencies, DOD if the document concerns military defense, ODNI if it concerns intelligence operations, DOJ if the document concerns law enforcement, and State Department if the document concerns foreign relations. If NARA does not agree that a proposed redaction meets the statutory standard for continued postponement, it will tell the agency that suggested the redaction. They'll consult and the agency may withdraw the redaction, or if it wants to, it will have to refer the decision to the president, accompanied by an explanation of why continued postponement remains necessary to protect against one of the four identifiable harms listed above. If NARA agrees that a proposed redaction meets the statutory standard for continued postponement, the archivist shall recommend to the president that continued postponement from public disclosure of the information is warranted. This is a tough standard to meet for an agency that wants to withhold any record, any material in the JFK Act collection. The JFK Act is extremely pro-disclosure. It is causing far more material to be released in these records than would ordinarily be the case. I would also highlight that the JFK Act supersedes the National Security Agency Act, the Identities Protection Act, nearly other withholding statute. Two months ago, the Director of National Intelligence wrote to Congress and said that overclassification, quote, erodes the basic trust that citizens have in their government, end quote. We agree with this support and the president's memorandum as a guide. We think that by this December, the overwhelming remainder of the final JFK Act records will be released at last. Second, on the 9-11 Commission records, I just want to concur with what Carter said, these records are very important for our history and for our future. The records require a thorough review. Agencies cannot conduct a typical pass-fail declassification review, and that's one where if an agency sees a single classified word on a page, it redacts the entire page. Instead, in the case of 9-11 Commission records, agencies must review the documents word for word and they must redact carefully, using standards like those found in the JFK Act that permit greater declassification. I think the American people expect this and deserve no less. Thank you. Thank you, Paul Noel, for sharing your insights and observations on these two important declassification initiatives. Next, we'll turn to Trey Gowney. As you all know, Trey served in Congress representing South Carolina's 4th District. He was appointed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in August 2020. Trey has served on a number of committees in Congress, including the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and he was the Chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Trey. Thank you, Chairman. Just a quick comment about the need for a new executive order and better policies to effectively manage digital information. I want to be sensitive to and fair to both branches that have equities here, but it is the congressional perspective that I am more familiar with. Most, perhaps all members of Congress, would tell you the executive branch classifies too much information. And all four members themselves, including those that served on committees of jurisdiction, are not able to discern why information has been classified. This board is familiar with a request made by Senator Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy. He requested this board's assistance in making a recommendation on whether certain information should be classified or not. This was not the first such entreat from Congress. It is not the only one presently pending, and nor will it be the last. While there are members of this board that have long and distinguished careers in and around intelligence, I would respectfully submit that as a whole we are not subject matter experts, and we are not best equipped to help members of Congress or the legislative branch when they have equities that they cannot advance. However, we are currently Congress's only option, and there is no process for the legislative branch to challenge classification decisions by the executive branch. So I think it makes sense for that to change and would argue a new executive order should contemplate a role for the legislative branch. Moreover, there is a widely held concern about the volume of classified information and the digital variety of said information. Government has to modernize the means and methods to address those concerns. The process around declassification and public access is antiquated. There are better ways primarily through advanced technologies to improve classification and declassification. And this has been a theme that has already been stated by two of our other board members. There are important parts of our history that are at risk if government does not modernize and enhance transparency. And this is an issue for all of us regardless of political orthodoxy. And frankly, it reflects the views of many people in both the executive and legislative branches. Thank you, Trey. Thanks for those remarks. Okay, next we're going to go to Michael Lawrence. And for those of you who don't know, Michael was appointed by President Trump in October 2020. He has extensive experience in the intelligence community, including at the National Security Council, the Director of National Intelligence, and also the National Reconnaissance Office. Michael, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just amplify the comments previously made by the board members, Carter and Paul Noel, about the need to prioritize historically significant records related to the September 11th attacks for declassification and continued advocacy for declassifying additional information from the Kennedy assassination records. In keeping with the functions of the PIDB, where we are responding to public interest on national security issues, we invited public comment on asking them the question, what should the government prioritize for classification? Two of the two takeaways from the public's responses were, one, the government needed to declassify historically significant records related to September 11th attacks. And secondly, that the government continues to withhold far too much information from the Kennedy assassination records collection. In response to the public's interest, the board held a public meeting with Jamie Gorellich, one of the 9-11 commissioners, and Phillip Zelicow, the executive director of the 9-11 commission, both of which I worked with in responding to materials that commission have requested from the National Security Agency. In addition, we met virtually with the staff of the National Archives and agencies and we heard from stakeholders. At the conclusion of these meetings and responding to the public's interest, the board wrote to President Biden advocating for a renewed government effort to declassify additional information. The board was encouraged to see the president issue executive order 14-040, requiring a special declassification effort to declassify certain records related to the 9-11 attacks. The president also issued a directive to agencies that would lead to far fewer redactions in the Kennedy assassination records. To conclude, the board is committed to greater transparency, realizing that far too much information is hidden. The board will continue to press for a prioritization of the declassification of records from the 9-11 commission and related investigations. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Next I'd like to introduce Ben Powell, who was appointed by President Trump in October 2020. Ben has a long career in the national security community, including as an intelligence officer at the United States Air Force. He also worked at the Bureau of Investigation. He was an associate White House counsel and he was the first general counsel of the Office of Director of National Intelligence serving under three directors. Ben. Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to talk a few minutes just about the recently passed legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act, mandating a feasibility study related to the Marshall Islands that the board has been tasked with. First, I'll note before getting into this, this is a bit of an unusual task presented to the board and I'll elaborate a bit on that. The fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act was signed in the law on December 27, 2021. It contains section 1685. In section 1685 of the act requires the board to conduct a feasibility study on the declassification review of information related to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States in the Marshall Islands, including cleanup activities and the storage of waste. There were 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, while cleanup activities and monitoring continue to this day. Both US servicemen and Marshallese were exposed to radiation. And of course, there's been resulting health concerns from that exposure. We were tasked by the Congress to conduct a high level feasibility study. I should be clear, this is a study to conduct an actual declassification review and the resources required for that declassification review. This is not a actual asking the board to actually do the declassification, which would be a massive task. In fact, what we are doing is determining what resources would be required to conduct a record by record declassification review. Our intent is to include a more complete understanding of the status of potentially responsive records created by government agencies and labs that participated in aspects of the nuclear weapons testing containment, environmental and human radiation testing, storage and cleanup activities. To date, the PIDB staff has held dozens of virtual meetings with stakeholders, including staff from the Departments of Defense and Energy and the National Archives, historians, representatives from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, researchers and congressional staff. And this work continues today. We've identified a number of challenges that will make this study and frankly future declassification projects that may be undertaken related to this topic more complex. First, the records are dispersed geographically from New Mexico and California to Washington DC and Iowa. Second, not all of the records despite their age are accession to the National Archives. Many are still held by the agencies complicating discovery. Third, the declassification process, especially those that require review by multiple agencies is complex and somewhat antiquated. Fourth, identifying what the government has in fact previously declassified and made available to the public is also proving challenging with some records available on various websites while others available only in research rooms around the country. And frankly, fifth, we are still learning about the records and have more research to conduct. We anticipate completing the study hopefully by the end of June that may prove challenging as we learn additional information. And then as mandated by the legislation providing that study, the Secretaries of Defense and Energy, along with the Armed Services Committees of the Congress. We would also anticipate releasing our study to the public and we will work with the staff to determine how best to make that study available to the public. Just in conclusion, as I noted at the outset, this is somewhat unusual for the board to be mandated to conduct a study on a very specific topic as is being done here. But the board, of course, will be responsive to the congressional legislation and complete this study. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ben. Next, we'll go to Alyssa Starzak. Alyssa was reappointed, as I mentioned before, by a Senate Majority Leader, Chair, and she's also served in a number of senior positions in both the executive and legislative branches of government, including as the General Counsel for the Department of the Army, the Deputy General Counsel for the Department of Defense, and she was also an Associate Counsel, Associate Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. And in the legislative branch, Alyssa served as Counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Alyssa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to say thanks, Senator Schumer, for reappointing me to the board. The board's mandate is exceptionally important. As Carter Burwell said, transparency and access to records is fundamental to a democratic government. I appreciate having the opportunity to serve on the board to help identify areas for improvement related to the government's process for declassifying information. And to that point, the issue I want to talk today about are the board's plans to provide input on the executive order that provides rules governing classification and declassification. The current executive order is almost 13 years old. And even at the time, there was a recognition that more work could be done in improving and modernizing the classification and declassification system. It is long overdue for a new executive order, and we think there's a lot that can be done to improve the system for modernizing classification and declassification of records. So I want to just step back for a second and think about what the challenge is. As the board articulated in a report we issued in 2020, the federal government has seen an explosion in digital data that creates significant challenges for declassification. We simply have too many records to handle declassification effectively, and the problem is only growing. We need to fully rethink how we handle records to reflect the world that we're in now as opposed to the world that was dealing with paper records in the past. And what is the harm? I think a lot of the board members actually spoke today about the importance of declassification of records. And I think the critical thing to understand is that credibility and trust in the government depends on the ability for the public to understand the work of the government. That doesn't mean that all information should be public, and we recognize that certain information should be protected from public disclosure, but we should be looking to maximize disclosure of information that provides the American public insight into the workings of the government. It's also worth noting that addressing overclassification challenges are not just about public access to records. Overclassification and overcompartmentation affects our ability to effectively execute new national security missions and activities. When we see this all the time, information isn't shared across agencies because of the classification levels. We see challenges of just getting access to important information that potentially affects programs. It's a long-term challenge. We need new processes that allow for greater and rapid information sharing, less classification and greater declassification, decision advantage and technological innovation. So what can a new executive order do to help modernize our process for declassification? Our 2020 report provided some interesting ideas about how we can take on the challenge. We flag the opportunities that can be realized by integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies into processes, by thinking through how we tag information and metadata. Although we don't believe that automation can solve all the classification challenges that we're facing, we think it can play an important role in simplifying the process for classification and declassification and expanding information sharing. The idea really is to think about how we aim to be consistent across different agencies, create better mechanisms for assessing information and really try to guard only the information that is most sensitive. But that idea requires a lot of work on the front end. It's not just a declassification question. It's a classification question. We need to think about the budgets for building technological tools, for making sure they're part of our long-term systems, so that same information that's used, that same metadata that's used to classify, can be used on the back end to declassify. The executive order can also play an important role in streamlining how we classify information and building consistency across federal agencies. So it's not just the technological tools that can do that. It's the executive order itself. Having a better process for classification in the first instance will make it easier to identify equities at the point of declassification and will ultimately strengthen the process. We also think that it's important that, I think, as Trey Gowdy said, that an executive order can ensure that there are mechanisms for review of classification or challenge to classification that reflect public priorities. We've certainly seen this on the congressional side where there's a hunger and a need for thinking through how information gets declassified and when, and making sure that there are independent processes to do that. The board simply isn't staffed to be that mechanism. And I think that we have to think long-term about what that looks like to make sure that there is accountability and fairness sort of built into the system. We think the executive order can help tackle that problem. We have many other ideas as well. We intend to put together a variety of recommendations to help the president improve the classification and declassification process through the executive order. And we're looking forward to hearing your ideas and recommendations. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. So before we move to answering your questions, I want to comment on what you've heard and a few other things. As Alyssa mentioned, the current executive order is nearly 15 years old. It was signed in 2009. And there's widespread agreement that it requires a significant amount of modernization to address the new national security threats that this country is facing. There's also widespread agreement that the current mandatory declassification system isn't working as well as it should at, as it should. And this needs to be seriously reworked. The NSC has asked us for our ideas and how to improve the executive order in the coming months. And we believe that this is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to put the system on a better footing. We believe that a new classification construct is necessary, one that greatly reduces overclassification. Overclassification is not in the public's interest. And frankly, it negatively impacts not just public transparency, but also it negatively affects our national security by impeding information sharing with our allies, restricting innovation and imposing unnecessary costs and delays on acquisitions. We're going to focus on three issues this year, the main issues. We have other things that come up over time like many of these congressional requests. The declassification and public release of records from the Kennedy assassination collection, as you heard agencies have until September to complete the review of 13,000 remaining classified records. Additionally, we're going to continue to monitor and prioritize the declassification of records related to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. We've received an extraordinary amount of feedback from the public on the 9-11 records and also the JFK records. And we're confident that this is of sufficient public interest that it's absolutely worthy of the board's time and effort. Lastly, as you heard from Ben Powell, Congress has asked us to conduct a feasibility study on the nuclear testing that took place in the Marshall Islands. And we are on track to release our feasibility study by June 27. I'd like to thank the Department of Defense for the assistance that they've given us in working through the Marshall Islands nuclear testing issue. And additionally, we look forward to working with the Department of Energy in the coming weeks. Lastly, I'd just like to point out that all of these initiatives are going to cost money. And as I wrote and as the board informed Speaker Pelosi earlier this year, ISU, which is the main office within the National Archives, has repeatedly sustained budget cuts over the past 10 years. This office is responsible for monitoring and making sure that there's compliance with the classification system. This office has been, staff has reduced and budget has reduced. And this makes it extremely hard to implement the existing executive orders, but also to implement future executive orders such as the revised executive order in the coming months. And so we've asked Congress and we've suggested to Congress that they need to really increase resourcing for this issue. So next we're going to turn to the public's questions. I'll just say at the offset we received a very interesting question and really paper from James David, who is the historian of the National Air and Space Museum. We'll be posting the entirety of his recommendations and the summary of his comments in the coming days on our blog. But in short, he suggests that there be a new executive order that requires agencies to publish information on file that's publicly available that specifically says the exemptions that they've received on declassification requests. Additionally, he's suggested that there's a report made to ISU in the National Declassification Center on the status of classified records. And also that once a year, a list of historically significant declassified records is that the list is made public. So that's easy for everybody to see in one place where these records are. Mr. David also recommended that the National Archives adopt a new declassification procedure to accelerate the transfer of classified records that meet to the National Declassification Center. And lastly, Mr. David recommended changes in the Interagency Security Classification Appeals panel to extend the time appellants have to appeal classification decisions. So I'll just comment on this briefly. I think added transparency is extremely important. I also think policies that improve transparency and enable prioritized declassification of records of historical significance are of importance. To aid declassification, the government must invest in advanced technologies that enable declassification and can aid word for word declassification. This goes to my previous comments on Congress promoting and ensuring that these initiatives are properly resourced. Are there any other members that would like to address Mr. David's comments before we move on? Okay. Robert, can you please go to the first question? Yes. The first question regards Kennedy assassination records. Why aren't all the documents related to the Kennedy assassination declassified? Thanks, Robert. Paul Noel, would you like to tackle this one? Sure. We agree that too many records and too much information has been withheld from the public and for too long. The law governing these records is quite clear and the standard for exempting information is much higher than required by the usual executive order or statute. The JFK Act specifies that it supersedes these other laws. So we have the tools and we believe that now, well, up till last fall it had not been implemented evenly and it had taken too long. But since President Biden signed the memo in October, we are pleased to see the agencies are really expediting this and releasing documents as they finish them, not waiting until the end. And we are pleased that the memo, the President signed, said that the National Archives and the DNI, in the case of intelligence records, have oversight roles with the ability to object to an agency decision. We think that's a key breakthrough and that almost every bit of the material will be released by December 15th. We're keeping close watch. And as I mentioned earlier, the number is down to fewer than 10,000 records now and they're coming out regularly. So we're optimistic that this will finally be the end of the release of the records. Thank you, Paul Newell. Robert? Next question from the public is, recently, the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haynes, wrote a letter to Senators Ron Wyden and Jerry Moran, which stated that deficiencies in the current classification system undermine our national security. What is the board's view on this statement? Michael Lawrence, would you like to take this question? Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, whoever sent in the question. We agree with the Director of National Intelligence comments that there is too much information that's classified. Overclassification harms our democracy and our national security. The board has written three reports to the President on this very topic. Last year, the board met with the Principal Deputy Director for the DNI, Stacey Dixon, where we provided her with the board's latest report, a vision for the digital age modernization of the U.S. National Security classification and declassification system. The board looks forward to continuing our dialogue with the DNI's office and other agencies to help modernize the classification system. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Michael. Robert, next question. Do you see classification and declassification policy as a policy area where bipartisanship can work and be achieved, or are there divergent views in philosophy or goals? That's a great question. Trent? Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I'll take that one primarily because it's easy and the answer is quick. It is viewed not only by this board as a nonpartisan issue. It is viewed by Congress as an opportunity for bipartisanship. And if you were to pull senior executive branch officials, regardless of the administration, regardless of when they served, they would also be like-minded. If it is a search for some issue that is apolitical and nonpartisan or bipartisan, this would be the issue. I'd just like to echo what Congressman Gowney just said. The board has really benefited as an institution from this nonpartisan and really bipartisan interest in transparency. And we've had excellent interactions with people from all over the political spectrum who really care about making sure that there's greater transparency for the public, but also that our system in place, when we do need to protect information, that it works better and it's more efficient. Thanks a lot, Trent. Okay, next I'd like to go to Robert. Can we have the next question? Sure. Does the PIDB see artificial intelligence, machine learning, information technology in general performing declassification review? What about mistakes? I can take that one if you want. Yeah, that sounds like what you talked about earlier, Alyssa. Go ahead. Yeah. So I actually think it's worth stepping back and realizing how far we are from that as an approach. We don't even have basic tools right now to identify and assess classification across different agencies. Agencies use different classification guides and searches for records or agency specific. So we are so far from an automatic declassification based on AI, but that just means that there's a lot to do, but there are a lot of things that we can improve on across the board. And I think I should say we learned a couple of lessons from speaking with some of our stakeholders, including declassification professionals. First, the current processes that we have can't keep pace with the volume of records requiring review. FOIA backlogs and mandatory declassification review backlogs are too big. As an example, we've heard that the FOIA backlog for records at the George W. Bush Presidential Library will take a generation to process. That is absolutely not acceptable in a democracy. Second, I think the other thing that we've seen is that our current processes are ineffective. We've learned from the National Security Archive and others that declassification decisions vary. Even on the same record where one reviewer redox information, but another reviewer within the same agency, not knowing what the other reviewer decided, declassifies the same information. As the volume of records grows greater and email threads get larger and include many recipients, we expect the error rate to go up. We have a need from a national security perspective to build consistency on how we classify and declassify records. The important thing to understand is that automated tools, AI, ML tools can actually help improve that across agencies. Our goal really is to think about how we actually improve national security and recognize that some of this work is sort of that underlying technological tools are critical to where we need to be. We're using technological tools in our sort of day-to-day work. From a government perspective, we have to use technological tools to think about records management and declassification on the backside. Thank you, Alyssa. I'll just add to that. The board had the privilege of traveling to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in the fall. We were hosted by Admiral Bob Sharp, who's done an excellent job really bringing the NGA up to speed on technology. There we had a briefing from a group of NGA that's working on this problem. I think it was encouraging to see the system that they've developed to simplify the classification process. Of course, this will pay off down the road. If you have a simpler process of classification going in, down the road it's going to be easier to declassify. But we also saw just how far away it was from being automated. I was really pleased and the board was very pleased that Director Haynes waited on this a few months back. Again, just like with the other challenges, this is going to really make this an automated system that has less error, but also allows us to move through mandatory declassification and declassification requests quicker. It's going to require a significant investment. And I think that having the DNI support on this helps with that, maybe through either IARPA tackling this problem or one of the many other R&D centers within the intelligence community. So this is really important. Robert, next question. Yes, regarding the Marshall Islands Declassification Feasibility Study, what information is the government hiding? Thousands of people were exposed to radiation from these tests, including soldiers who had to clean up in the 1970s. The submitter of the question states, I think all information should be available. We also support maximum transparency, but go ahead, Ben, if you want to say more on this. Sure, it happened to respond and appreciate the question and also appreciate the passage of time as people who may have been involved in this and had impacts from it are obviously a lot of time has passed. And if there's information there, that can be helpful. As the chairman said, we certainly support more transparency in this area. Certainly the board's not experts in the areas of nuclear weapons testing, cleanup and nuclear physics. The legislation that I referenced earlier references the ballistic missile tests, chemical weapons tests and nuclear tests. Obviously information can be interspersed in there related to those topics that is often highly classified. We're learning more about these issues through the hard work of the PIDB staff that has had the meetings with the various stakeholders I outlined before. We've had over 30 meetings to date and conducting research into the status and locations of the records and we expect that to continue. Although our feasibility studies going to be at a high level and we will not review individual records, we certainly realize that these records are important to the Marshallese and to service persons who were involved, especially any of those who were exposed to radiation. These records may prove critical. We are realizing as we get into this study that a project would be complicated here, that the declassified records are located around the country. As I outlined before, whether that's the National Archives and agencies and several different presidential libraries, some in the national labs and many may be online on a variety of different websites. So it's been challenging to just learn what has been declassified and what is not declassified. Others may be restricted from public access for privacy or other medical reasons. So we're working hard within the time frames that we've been given to provide this study to the Secretaries of Defense and Energy and to the Congressional Committees of the Armed Services. So they can determine whether or not they want to put the kinds of resources that will be required to actually carry out the record by record assessment to carry out a full declassification review. I should just note, at least speaking for myself and not the other board members, I don't think that the board is certainly not a place that is equipped in any manner to carry out a record by record assessment of the types of volumes of records, nor as I mentioned do we have the kinds of expertise to carry out that review. So if Congress chooses to move forward or the president with a record by record assessment and enhanced declassification review, we'll go off to determine what agency and resources can best make that happen in a timely manner. Thank you. And I would just add that once our feasibility assessment is completed, the board is planning to hold another public meeting soon after our assessments complete to share the results with the public. All right. Next question, Robert. I have two questions from one submitter. When will we learn who was responsible for financing the 9-11 hijackers? And is the government making headway in declassifying the Kennedy assassination records? I'll take this one, Robert. First of all, you know, the board is continuing to apply pressure and really focus in on making sure that both of these collections of records that there's maximum transparency on both of these collections. You know, we've taken a number of steps. Last year we wrote to the president about the importance of releasing these key 9-11 records. A number of those records are currently in final review. And after our letter, the president signed Executive Order 14-04-40, which made it very clear what standards were to be applied. And the board was very encouraged by this Executive Order. You know, I think that they're currently working their way through the NSC process. But we're hopeful with the appointment of the new NSC Senior Director for Records Management that we'll be seeing results of this review very soon and then hopefully public release soon thereafter. Similarly, with the Kennedy assassination records, we wrote to the president and we saw a very well-reasoned Executive Order that followed our recommendations that lays out a strict process that puts, to some extent, the White House Council in charge of managing this process. And I think that this is really a, you know, we're reaching a breakthrough here. And I feel just as Paul Noel said earlier on that we really hope that the bulk of the 13,000 records will be declassified by the end of the year. So let's go to the next question, Robert. How will the government decide what should be prioritized for declassification? What about declassification reviews that are required by statute like the Department of State's Foreign Relations of the United States series? Paul Noel, do you want to take this one? Sure. I think prioritization should be part of the new Executive Order that delays, it's going to necessarily have to delay some automatic declassification reviews beyond the 25 years while requiring word-for-word reviews of historically significant records like the 9-11 Commission, including those that are, ones that we know there's a great public interest in. There should be discussions on how to prioritize what records get expedited treatment and what have to wait longer. This is a very important part of the Executive Order crafting that we need to work into as well as the impact on the use of advanced technologies that could have on our outlook for the best way to do this. I would like to just say that there's a big administrative problem in the declassification of records across different programs in FOIA cases, in Privacy Act litigation, in the Foreign Relations of the United States series. In all of these records, you basically have a cadre of experienced reviewers in an agency, and those are the same people who usually work FOIA or Privacy Act or FRUCE or 25-year declass. And so when you give them a new task, they sort of have to shuffle their existing ones and get behind in another area. And I remember during the Obama Administration, the Obama Administration was really pushing towards transparency. They stood up a lot of Tiger teams for increased sharing with local, state, and tribal governments. I was on several of these teams, and every time I went to a meeting at the White House, I met with the same people from the State Department, the same people from the Department of Defense, because that was their senior reviewer, and they also had a new hat they were wearing in this new thing. So some of this is resources, and the agencies are simply going to have to commit more resources if we want to do everything. So that's what I would add. Thank you, Paul Noelle, for that insight. Next question, Robert. Yes. What does the PIDB see as the top three most important changes to a future executive order governing the classified national security information system? Carter, you're entering the board new, and you're kind of looking at this with fresh eyes. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, thanks, Ezra. I think, you know, you've heard a lot of talk about these issues already, in particular, the use of advanced technologies, but I'd say generally from my perspective, and as I'm learning, there aren't just three to pick from among a host of different changes for a new EO. You know, I think advanced technologies is certainly one of the leading ones, but some other ideas that I'm learning about now, and I think, you know, Alyssa is going to also chime in here on the end, but I'd go through some ideas like adopting a risk standard for making classification decisions, simplifying the classification system from three levels to two to match the classified systems, moving the ISOO or what I've learned is the Information Security Oversight Office, the agency that's responsible for some of these decisions out of the National Archives and moving it over to OMB, we think is a good priority. Rethinking automatic declassification to prevent improved declassification for records of public interest or historically significant ones and evaluating a potential drop dead date for classification, giving the interagency security classification appeals panel more authority and more discretion, ensuring that there's funding. You know, we were just talking about that a minute ago, more funding. Paul Noel was talking about that to modernize the classification system and then really requiring agencies to fund declassification as a percentage of their classification activities. So not just focusing on classifying information, but also declassifying information. But I know Alyssa also wants to weigh in here, so I'll pause and learn more from her. I agree with all the issues that you raised, Carter. I think they're all incredibly important and there's so many to think about the executive order. I think that we have our work cut out for us on the recommendation side. I think there are a couple that I would add. I think there's actually a lot of work that could be done on streamlining classification across different agencies. I think that what we've seen in sort of going out to NGA and other places, which I feel like is probably not visible to the public. Every agency has their own process. They have their each other own original classification authority. And what that potentially means is sometimes there are discrepancies between how different agencies classify and declassify. And so I think in the new executive order, thinking about how we start to move towards what might seem like an unimaginable process for people in government. But with to the idea of having essentially a single classification guide, which you have no idea how novel that would sound if you're in government, if you're not in government. But the idea of sort of reducing the overall number of classification guides really come up with coming up with a streamlined system across different agencies, I think is where we want to strive towards. And I think that actually fits into if you could actually do that from a practical standpoint, you would understand if one agency declassifies a certain set of records, you can then build in tools that then flags that issue for a different agency. So thinking about that inner operability between different agencies in our tools and then building in tools to sort of work with it. Again, that it's, it may sound sort of obvious from to an outside group, but it is that is completely radical for for the government. And then I think the other piece I mentioned this in my remarks, but it really is something that we need to think a lot more about. We need sort of external mechanisms to think about priorities for declassification and making sure that that the issues that are really in the public interest that have identified that identified as being in the public interest by Congress or by by the by larger sort of groupings of the public are really prioritized for declassification. And I think I think some of the those those mechanisms can be internal to a particular agency as well. And so some of what we see is that over classification can be a problem of incentives. So if you think if you imagine intelligence community professional working on a day to day working on day to day classified information, they're not thinking about the long term negative effect or harm of over classification, because they don't need to worry about that in their day to day. So I think we really need to put some challenges into those, those general incentives, think about how we encourage people to really make assessments about classification early, so that we actually have less to declassify on the back end. I think we on the board and see the costs of over classification and the need for simplifying the classification system and really improving it, because we see the long term harm. So I think there's a lot of room that can be done in the executive order. I'm more excited again to put together all of these ideas into into some recommendations for the for the president. Thank you, Alyssa. Robert, I think we have time for one more question. Okay, I think I'll read this one in James David has provided a follow up comment on email regarding his recommendations as we discussed he says, perhaps the most important recommendation he made is that automatic systematic declassification has to use redaction, not pass fail for very high level records. For example, Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense, however, because redaction takes so much more time than pass fail, the agencies will have to receive delays in the automatic declassification dates for the much more volumous, lower level records, such as from ASD health and medical ASD administration and the ASD controller. That's his statement. I'll respond. Please. I'll respond to Alyssa wants to add something else. And I think we'll have time for actually one more question after that. But I think that, you know, using redactions, that's, that's the kind of the schedule approach. And I think that that's really what we're aiming for is just withholding the information that for one of these reasons needs to remain classified, but it needs to be a very targeted withholding. This really goes to what Alyssa was saying, which is that it's much more labor intensive. Meanwhile, budgets for this sort of thing are not increasing or actually decreasing. As we talked about people view this as kind of a deferred, something that they can defer to somebody else because the reviews happen, you know, 25 years down the road or even longer. In some cases. So what we need to do is quickly invest in automated solutions that will allow us to review these documents. And once a piece of information is identified, and the algorithms are trained to know that certain types of information have to continue to be withheld. And specific lines, as Mr. David says, it then becomes easier to apply those rules to other documents and other places within the government. And so this is this is something that, you know, again, I hope with the DNI making this a priority. We can start to really put some serious RMD money towards solving this problem. Alyssa, anything else you'd like to add? Yeah, actually, thanks. No, I think it's a really interesting point. I think the other thing that we have to think about is actually the creation of a document that needs redaction in the first place. So you could imagine a situation if again, if we think about incentives, if people who are writing documents did a better job of creating a document that is actually unclassified in the first instance or being very, very calculating about particular paragraphs that are classified, it would be much easier to do that process on the back end. And you would actually have a lot more information out in the public much faster. So I think that there is, there's a lot of work that can be done in the first instance, which, you know, we have to think not only about the records that currently exist. And that's a lot of records. But also in the records that we're creating today and think about the systems that we create that reduce that overall amount of classified information so that we can actually handle records, you know, 25 years down the road from now. Okay. Robert, we have time, I think, for one more. I've got a bundle of them here. Let me just read one more. Over the past two years and more prominent Defense Department officials, including the current commander of the US Space Force Command, John Raymond, and the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Heighten, have complained about what they call overclassification of information connected with US operations in space. Has the PIDB done anything to engage with these officials to better understand the issue of overclassification? And could the PIDB do anything to address their complaints if you did? Thanks, Robert. I'll just comment on this one. You know, first of all, you know, I know it had the privilege of working with both, you know, now retired General Heighten and General Raymond when I was the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. And both of those gentlemen are incredibly mission focused and have the absolute best interest of our country at heart. And when they're saying that overclassification is presenting them with a challenge and it's challenging them to adequately compete in space, that's something that we have to take very, very seriously. And it means it's a real problem. And this is something the board has been talking about for the past six months. And one of the things that we have plans to do and that we're in the process of doing is soliciting feedback, not just from people like General Heighten and other senior defense and former defense officials who understand these issues. But we're also in the process and we've reached out to industry because industry, especially the space industry, really are working hand in hand with the Department of Defense on really establishing security in space. And we need to understand from industry how overclassification may be increasing costs on the Department of Defense but also hampering innovation and research and development of next generation technologies. So this is something that the board has been aware of and we are in the process and have already reached out to some of these folks to get their feedback. And I think that as we look at reforming our classification system and one of the ways we've talked about it like this through suggestions in the EO, we are going to do it in part through the lens of space because this is such an important area. So that's currently where the board is on that. Do any of the other board members want to comment on that question? So I think with that, this concludes our meeting. I just want to thank the public for their excellent questions and engagement. The board is doing its best to get to all these things and we'll be posting answers to many of the questions later this week on the blog. We also plan to have another public meeting probably in July after the release of the Feasibility Study on the Marshall Islands Nuclear Testing Documents. And I'll just close by thanking the staff. The PIDB is supported by the ISU staff. And as I've mentioned, their numbers have been cut and their budget has been cut, which means they're frankly doing more with less. As calls for greater transparency increase across government and from Congress, a lot of those things fall onto the workers at ISU. And they're doing an extraordinary job given the increasing demands and we're very appreciative of the support that they give to the PIDB. So with that, I'd just like to thank everyone again and this concludes our meeting.