 Good afternoon. I'm going to find out if I'm mic'd or not. So we'll see how this goes. But welcome to the Public Interest Declassifications Board's first public meeting since the beginning of COVID. So we have had meetings, but they've all been virtual today since the pandemic started. So we're very excited to be here in person today. So I'm Alyssa Starzak. I'm the acting chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board. And again, we're very enthusiastic about having an audience today. So we're going to have a couple attendees join us today. But before we get to that, I just want to say many thanks to Mark Lawrence and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for hosting us and, of course, to the Klement Center for Organizing the Conference. So I'm going to start just an overview of what we're going to cover in the meeting. And then I'm going to turn it over to Carter Burwell to give us a sense of what to expect later this evening. And then I'll give, I'll turn it, then I think Carter will turn it over to Ezra Cohen right here, who will give a sense of what the PIDB has done over the course of the past year. The board is also going to be joined by Evan Goddusman, who is currently a staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who's going to give a sense of some of the challenges that we see with classification and declassification policy, and really what Congress is thinking right now and where we might go in the next year. And I think after that, and let's keep track, make sure I have it all in my notes here, I think we're going to do, I'm going to talk a little bit about where we're going over the next year and what we see in the year ahead from a, just from a big, big initiative standpoint. If you have questions, we're going to, we want to make sure we have time to take questions, but there's also an email that you can send questions to, and that is PIDB at nara.gov, so N-A-R-A.gov. So if you have any questions, please feel free to email. We'll also open up the mics at some point and make sure we take questions that way. So looking forward to a productive meeting today, again, thanks for joining us and I'll turn it over to Carter. Welcome everyone, thank you for coming. I am one of the newest member, I think, of the Public Interest Declassification Board, and I like to say that this conference was really a gleam in the eye of John Powers, who was the, at the time, one of the lead staffers and welcomed me, called to let me know that Senator McConnell appointed me to the board and gave me a kind of a welcome and introduction to the board and told me it was such a, the issue of declassification had very, there was very little public interest on the subject of declassification. That it was a sleepy subject that it was the goal of the Public Interest Declassification Board to help raise the awareness about issues about classified information, the struggles with declassified information and that it was the mission of the PIDB to help do that. And one of the ways to do that was to try and have a conference and try and get out of Washington and come to a place that regularly dealt with the subject. And that having a public conference on the subject would help raise awareness and make the public interested in declassification. So that was ironic because that was about nine months ago. Very grateful to Will and Bowden here at the Clements Center and Adam Klein at the Strauss Center for helping to put this on. And Elizabeth, who was floating around in the back, incredibly helpful to try and put this event together with the idea to raise the awareness in it among, that's actually an Amber Alert that's coming through. So everybody's phones are probably lighting up. So to raise the profile of the subject and to do so with the constituencies who care about the subject. So of course, tonight, Admiral Haynes is coming, the Director of National Intelligence. She'd spoken on the issue recently and kind of when I joined the board, this is an issue that the PIDB has been focused on for a long time. And so incredibly grateful that she's coming tonight. And I think C-SPAN's covering it, that she's gonna speak on issues there, I'll go. Just to see. Yeah, so it's gonna speak on the subject and really grateful to hear what she's gonna have to say. We know that there is ongoing activity and then it was publicly reported that the National Security Council is considering changing the executive order related to classified information. Looking forward to hearing if maybe that's, there's progress there. But tomorrow's conference is incredibly important as well because the hope is to hear from various constituencies that care about classified information. So we're gonna have historians, academics who regularly wanna engage with classified information, but have struggled to do so because they're not able to. We have a panel of technologists who are coming. As the information is digitized, as emails that the scope and breadth of classified information is expanding exponentially. Somebody, I think there was an op-ed where drowning in secrets. And is technology a way forward for that? Can you use artificial intelligence? Can you screen so that we can start sharing this information? We have a panel of media. You know, we had an event back in Washington recently and they talked about how they are the representatives of the public interest, that they need to be a part of the conversation. And I think it's incredibly important. So we're grateful to have a few people. Ben's gonna lead the panel tomorrow with several representatives from the media to talk about what their struggle with classified information. That'll be very entertaining. And then I think I'm gonna lead a panel with government historians. And how they regularly kind of deal with it. How they prioritize classified information. Does that help give us a path forward? Grateful that in the middle of all of this, my former boss, Senator Cornyn, is gonna come and give an address too and talk about how critically important transparency is. And I think as his speech is saying, folks are focused in Washington about the reauthorization of 702 and one of our critical national security tools and whether transparency is a path to that. And that the public needs greater confidence in what our national security folks are doing in the way that we're handling and treating national security information in his transparency of path four. So all of that is a long-winded way of saying we're grateful that you are interested in classified information now. We're grateful that you're gonna hear from civil society groups and academics and journalists and technology wonks and the director of national intelligence and Senator Cornyn. So thanks again to the Clement Center for having us, for the LBJ library for hosting us and I will now turn it over with that long-winded introduction to Ezra Cohen who is just finished leading us as chair of the PIDB and incredibly successful in pushing a number of objectives over the finish line and continuing to do so. So grateful for your leadership and I'll pass it over to you Ezra. Well, thanks Carter. Thank you, Alyssa. We're gonna be doing a lot over the next 24 hours on the subject. And as Carter said, when we came up with the idea for this conference about nine, 10 months ago, we were a bit worried we would be talking to ourselves as we often are in this field but I think things have changed a bit. The board's also done a lot over the past year and we've been really lucky that we have for the first time in many years, the board has a full complement of members and that's not something we've always had but that's also allowed us to really bring in a lot more viewpoints and also tackle many, many more subjects. We started off the year last January by sending a report to Speaker Pelosi, then Speaker Pelosi and the president of the United States and we highlighted to them. I think one of the main things from that memo was the fact that this mission of making sure looking after our classified records, not just so that we can safeguard them but also so that we can get out what we need for the American public for proper degree of transparency is underfunded. And we were under resourced and we were extremely clear about that. After that, we got to work very quickly with the tasking from Congress that was in the National Defense Authorization Act to review the Marshall Islands classified records related to nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. And that was a challenge for the board given limited resourcing on this topic in general but also the fact that the number of records related to nuclear weapons testing that for the Marshall Islands, that are still classified to this day is staggering and performing that review across the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services. There was an enormous amount of work that the staff had to do, really kind of moonlighting doing that because the same staff that handles these key requests to declassify things at the National Archives, the same staff that handles making sure that agencies are properly handling classified records is the staff that we have to do that type of study. So it was extremely onerous. Ultimately what we found is, it really is a great representation of the problem. Here's this issue, huge public interest. There are many Marshallese who continue to have health effects and but there are all these records that remain classified and the kind of not knowing creates a lot of questions. After that, the board really turns its focus back to making sure that the 9-11 records and some key 9-11 records were released to the public. This is something that the board started very early on two years ago. We were specifically interested in getting some of these records out now that we're 20 years past the attack on 9-11 and ultimately we've so far had one record released. There's another record in the pipeline that was the transcript that the 9-11 or the memo that the 9-11 commission wrote related to from their interview with George Bush, President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And I think there were a lot of very insightful things in there about the way the vice president and the president communicated about some really some of the most important authorities that they have. From there, the board finally was able to respond to requests that we got from Senator Murphy, which came in just before the pandemic. And obviously we were delayed in getting that out because it was very hard for us to meet. And there were several recommendations that we made to the president regarding the records that Senator Murphy had requested. One of the documents related to a national was a national intelligent estimate about the election election interference, foreign election interference. And the other was a document related to the death of an assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. And I think just to kind of wrap things up, the other big accomplishment from last year was the release of a good portion of the remaining records that are still classified that are related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. This is something the board has fought for for a long time. We talked to a lot of people. We really tried to understand the topic. We wrote to the president on multiple occasions, interacted with people at the NSC and we brought quite a bit of public attention to this and we were very, very pleased with President Biden's decision to release really almost 75% of those records. And we hope that the remaining records will be released soon. That was a real case study in, I think what's wrong with the system that after so many years, all that information which has been withheld, many of it just because we simply didn't have the resources to look at it. Just think of all the questions that have been created because we couldn't have more transparency. And so that was, it's been a busy year. It was a busy year. And I'll say in closing, before I turn it to Michael to introduce the speaker, is that we really, the board is nonpartisan. And what do we mean by that? Well, we're all appointed by different people but this is really a topic where there's enormous agreement. The board works in an incredibly effective way and I couldn't be passing the torch to a better person. And so we're very, very happy and couldn't be happier to have Alyssa now as the acting chair. So thank you, Alyssa. We turn it over to Michael. Sure, thanks, Ezra. Let me just first amplify what's been said already about Ezra and his leadership because if it was not for Ezra's leadership and member Carter's involvement, we would not be here today and certainly not have the conference tomorrow. So thank you both for your hard work on getting this set up for us. I have the pleasure of introducing Evan Katzman who works for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2005. And in 2009, he was appointed to be the council on the committee and that makes him the longest serving professional staff member on the Senate Intelligence Committee which is quite a task given that they've had numerous chairman and vice chairman throughout all those years and it certainly talks to the professionalism that Evan brings to the table about himself. He also has a reputation since it is Washington. Everybody has a reputation and his is one of being a very hardworking individual, an individual who does his homework, knows the issue and also ask very tough questions. And I know that firsthand because I briefed the chairman, the vice chairman and Evan on numerous occasions when I worked at the Department of Defense. So he comes by that reputation earnestly. So thank you for coming and joining us today and welcome to our first meeting. Thank you. Am I on? Okay. First of all, thank you very much. It's a real honor and a pleasure to be with the board. I'm not actually the council on the committee. I think at one point they just allowed me to call myself council just cause I once had a law degree but it doesn't go beyond that. A lot of what I wanna say today is an appreciation for the board and the work that it's done and to explain exactly how especially in recent years it is informed the Senate Intelligence Committee. It's informed my boss on the committee who's Senator Wyden from Oregon. Also Senator Moran from Kansas. And the committee as a whole it is a model of how outside independent entity can do research, can uncover problems in the federal government and then those problems that can be acted upon by people in Congress. The appreciation that the intelligence committee in Congress has as a whole for the PIDB is reflected one in the fact that a few years ago we voted to permanently authorize the PIDB. Previously it had to be reauthorized on a periodic basis and that's not fun for anybody. But it's an indication of how important the board is. And then also the fact that a member of the committee will be speaking here tomorrow and no fewer than three staff members are here today and tomorrow as well. So there's a real affinity and appreciation. I don't wanna go too far back because the question of Congress and over-classification and declassification problems goes back decades and decades and decades. My boss Senator Wyden worked with Daniel Patrick Moynihan on this issue a couple of decades ago. I'm not gonna go further back. But what has happened recently is that they've been a series of very good reporting, very important investigation by the PIDB and also I should say the ISU which is also really contributed to the country's understanding and Congress's understanding of the problem as well. So for years the PIDB and the ISU were putting out reports about this wave of tsunami of classified information in their digital world. Information gets classified at a click of a button. And there's no barriers to just piling it on and piling it on and piling it on. But meanwhile on the back end the declassification process is completely obsolete. The board has reported on this. Most of you probably know this already otherwise you wouldn't be at a public interest declassification board meeting. But it was a problem that started to really get the attention of a number of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And then the board actually had a one very specific recommendation, a lot of recommendations, but one in particular caught the attention of a number of members of Congress, including Sarah Wyden, which was to designate the Director of National Intelligence as the executive agent for declassification. And the purpose was that only that office had the ability, the bureaucratic strength, the expertise to push forward investments in the kind of modernization technology that really needs to happen if the declassification process is gonna keep up with the tsunami of classified information to find best practices across the agencies to promote and also to promote integration among the agencies and a federated system that would allow everybody to work together to make sure that information that needs to get declassified does get declassified. So in 2020, Senators Wyden and Moran introduced bipartisan legislation that would have codified the PIDB recommendation. And then in September of 2020, we had an open hearing about it. And I overheard some people saying, how often does this happen that the Senate Intelligence Committee has a open hearing about anything really? But particularly about declassification and the answer is not that frequently. So it was a watershed moment in terms of creating this public record on this subject. One of our witnesses was John Tierney who is a member of the board and then the ODNI was there. And there was discussion about this question about the DNI being designated the executive agent for declassification. There wasn't complete agreement about it but what was really important was the consensus that came out of this open hearing. And the consensus was that there is a serious problem. Everybody recognized it. The director of national intelligence folks, they recognized that there was no disagreement nor was there any disagreement about the need for serious reform and investments in modernization and the need to create integration among the agencies. So we had the open hearing, there are questions for the record that were answered both by Mr. Tierney and by the ODNI. Those are public records. And so while the PIDB and the ISU provided all the information that we needed to really get the ball rolling and for that we were extremely indebted. The committee was able to have this open hearing in which it laid out on the congressional record. So that was September, 2020. In November, there was an election and a new administration came in and we picked up where we left off. Director Haynes during her confirmation process was asked about the problem and she acknowledged that no, the declassification process cannot keep pace with the rapid amount of classifications that were happening. She also said that the DNI placed a role in promoting strategic investments in modernization to address that issue. So right from the get go, during her confirmation process, the DNI was acknowledging the issue, acknowledging the need for reform. It was at that point that Senator Wyden and Moran began a exchange of letters with the director of national intelligence, plus a letter to Director Haynes the president and let me just make sure that I get these right. So in October of 2021, Senators Wyden and Moran sent a letter to the DNI addressing two important issues. One was what I was just talking about, which is the need to invest in modernization technology. And then the other one was promoting changes to executive order 13526, which has not been modified since 2009. And so there's a lot of argument that in fact that might be a little obsolete as well. There have been enough changes and enough identified needs for fixes that the executive order needs to be changed. By the way, that letter, the October 2021 letter also asked the DNI about whether or not there were lessons learned from the period at the height of the pandemic when a lot of people were working from home in the intelligence community and certain information got declassified in order to allow people to work from home. And so the question was, were there lessons learned? Did it turn out to be easier to declassify things than you thought? Was it possible to actually accommodate people working from home and can those lessons be learned to apply to broader declassification? The following January says January 2022. The DNI wrote back and these are all some public letters because if you're gonna talk about transparency, it's nice to talk about it transparently. And she acknowledged the severity of the problem. And she also acknowledged that the current prioritization and resources directed at the problem were thus far insufficient and offered to work with Senators Wyden and Moran and by extension the Senate Intelligence Committee to try to address this. So we established a partnership with the DNI which continues. I mentioned Executive Order 13526. This is an issue that is being taken up by the National Security Council. And in May of 2022, Senators Wyden and Moran wrote to President Biden about this. And the point of that letter was to ask the president to make this an urgent priority and to resource the National Security Council adequately so that it could fully tackle this issue with this extraordinarily complex interagency problem. If you want to deal with declassification reform across the government, the National Security Council is always very busy. It's got a crisis every day. And so it's easy for long-term reform efforts to not get the attention that they need. And then of course when you're dealing with many agencies that have many different kinds of equities when it comes to classification and declassification, it's easy to lose track of them. And next thing you know, you have a herding cats problem and things don't get done. So the point of that letter was to really say this needs high level attention and that the White House and National Security Council really need to make sure that everybody is on board. Everybody is participating. Everybody is offering substantive input so that the job can get done and so that it doesn't languish. The other point that the letter made was to say that Congress and then members of the public should be engaged in that process as well. And this past August, the DNI responded to that letter and among the things that she said was yes indeed, Congress and civil society ought to be involved in that process. One other thing that was in that last letter was that the DNI attached a few examples of where different agencies are doing declassification and how, which was a step forward. There were a number of redactions. There were a lot of redactions. Not surprisingly, these are the activities that are going on within the intelligence community but those in fact drew more attention to the fact that some of the stuff is going to have to happen in closed session. Some of it is gonna have to happen within the intelligence community. Certainly any resourcing, it's going to be classified. So there has to be a dual effort here both on the open transparent side and behind closed doors. And then speaking of the committee, following its September, 2020 hearing, the committee has been engaged on this issue and very interested. A lot of it you don't know about but in the Last Intelligence Authorization Act there was language in the public report that acknowledged the committee's ongoing concern for this problem of an obsolete declassification system not being able to keep up with the classification. It also directed the DNI and the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to review and report on declassification practices and policies across the government funding for these activities and investments in modernization. And then the committee directed the DNI and the Under Secretary of Defense to report on proposals to promote best practices that could be applied across agencies and or as part of a federated system, costs of these systems and a spend plan for research and development and promotion of modernization technologies. So we're looking forward to that report and looking forward to being able to continue to work with the government. By the way, the most recent Intelligence Authorization Act also had a provision asking the PIDB to report on possible amendments to Executive Order 13526, something that we're already working on but we thought it'd be a good idea to legislate that, to ask about how the ISU can be made more effective and also an update on the PIDB's recommendation related to the designation of the DNI as the Executivation for Declassification. I wanna close before I take questions on a slightly different topic, which is that I was asked about congressional requests for declassification of specific topics and Senator Murphy's requests were mentioned before, I can't speak at all for anybody outside the Intelligence Committee or for the House of Representatives, but having been at the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can tell you it takes many, many different forms. We have the advantage of having direct access to the intelligence community. So it's easier to talk these things through with them and sometimes these kinds of requests can come through in informal conversations. Oftentimes though they get sent through letters, the letters can be classified. Here's a specific piece of classified information that we'd like declassified. Sometimes they can be unclassified letters or they can be articulated in other public ways, unclassified letters, public hearings, floor statements, press statements. It's always tricky when you're asking for something to be declassified in an unclassified setting. Sometimes you can say it directly, sometimes you have to make an inference or imply it. It gets even trickier when you're passing unclassified legislation, asking for the declassification of a piece of classified information, but it is a learning process. I have seen all of these tactics used individually and in combination. I've seen them work and I've seen them not work. I want to leave this part of the conversation with it is a case-by-case issue. It requires a lot of attention. It requires a lot of persistence. Sometimes it requires a lot of arguing, but there actually isn't a one-size-fits-all. It depends on who's asking. It depends on who the administration is. It depends on the equities of the intelligence agency that are involved. It depends on the political context. One specific example, the committee passed legislation requiring the declassification of a report on who was responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The legislation passed. The report didn't get passed. Then there was an election. And again, at her confirmation process, the DNI was asked about this legislation that required this public report. She said, I'm going to adhere to this law. And she did and the report was passed. So that's an example of it working, but it's also an example of delays and the requirement of persistence and sometimes the right people in the right place making declassification happen. And with that, I will pause. Thank you. So I think we have some options here. I think one of the thoughts is that maybe we can have a little bit of a discussion on some of the big topics that we are seeing coming up and maybe we can integrate some of Evan's comments because I think there's some really interesting and important ones. So maybe I'll start, but I think it should be, we can make it interactive with the board and kind of go from there. Oops, apparently now I am late. So I actually, I have a feeling, you know, Evan actually threw around a bunch of terms that are very familiar to us here on the board but are probably less familiar to those in the audience. So just to sort of put some of the things out there, Evan was talking about executive order 13526. That is basically the presidential direction that says how something is classified and how it's not or how it gets declassified. So it's the process for doing that. It's the standards of classification. It includes lots of other things too but that's what's being considered for reform right now. So when we think about our recommendations, one of the things that, one of the reasons we wanna have a hearing and we wanna actually talk about these things in public is because we really are thinking about why are things classified? What is the basis for what are the challenges that Evan, some of the challenges that Evan described and then what can we do about it systematically? So I guess I'm gonna start with that question a little bit. I'm gonna go towards executive order 13526. And I'm actually, I'm gonna turn the question back over to Evan and just ask if there are sort of big suggestions that you as a staffer on the Intel committee think would be helpful as we think about recommendations going forward. So I think certainly it starts with the question of modernization and the application of new technologies to the declassification process, the need to do so in an integrated fashion federated across the federal government. Any way in which the executive order can be amended to promote that, to accommodate those kinds of reforms certainly would be valuable and certainly consistent with the kinds of things that the senators and the committee have been promoting. There are a number of other recommendations. Oh, certainly one of the long saying promises that information that is supposed to be declassified after 25 years or 50 years and this is all pursuant to the same executive order doesn't get declassified. They just sit in databases and it doesn't happen. And so there may be changes to the executive order to tweak the way in which the government deals with those historical documents. It's long been a concern and I don't know how to deal with this in the executive order that there's a sort of cultural shift that's needed, right? That you need, and this is not ever to blame anybody but that when the government leans towards declassification rather than declassification you end up with overclassification and there may be ways to fix that. And then one other thing that I will suggest which is not executive order 13526 per se but is also something that is being looked at is the problem of unclassified but still sensitive sources of information with names like law enforcement sensitive or for official use only. This really bedevils members of Congress because they extract information from the executive branch, it's unclassified. The member of Congress may want to say something publicly about whatever they've uncovered and there's a for official use only or some other designation at the top of the page. And it becomes very hard for members of Congress then to engage the public in this issue. The for official use only and these other designations are the subject of a separate executive order but it's, there isn't the long history of figuring out what the justifications are or lack of justifications for these designations are or what the process for DFOUOing or DLESing documents. So that is another issue that is related to this that could use some consideration. I know the AISU looks very carefully at this issue as well. I'm gonna keep asking questions that you want to. Sure. Evan, what do you think is the biggest challenge to work on the classification and declassification system and what opportunities do you see for reform? So I do, it's two topics, right? One is the modernization practice. It is not controversial that the system is obsolete. It's not controversial that it needs reform but the issue involves investments. So there's front end money that has to be invested but that is a big part of it. And this is the kind of thing that doesn't require anybody to wrestle with questions of what should or should not be classified in the front end. So in that sense, you can tackle this aspect of the reform without having to get in any fights about so substantive classification decisions. So hopefully, if you can get past the resourcing issue and questions about who's making these investments and who's promoting them, that should be low hanging fruit. And the other is the amendments to the executive order which the National Security Council is tackling that is challenging. Like I said, it's a big interagency process. So, and as I mentioned as well, it's something that the committee and Senator Wyden, Senator Moran are tracking very closely. What about the committee's interest in AI and using that as a tool? Is that something that the committee is considering or supports? It is part of the menu of opportunities that are there for the declassification process. When you have that much data, when you have massive databases, when you have to find the records in those databases that are scheduled for declassification but have not been yet, certainly AI and machine learning are part of that. I don't know whether or not Congress needs to legislate specifically on the exact means to do this, but it's come up in our hearing. And it's certainly part of the solution to the broader modernization problem. I think, Evan, you did a good job in talking about the lack of resourcing. Would Congress potentially consider something where an expansion of the IC would have to be matched by in some ratio with an increase in money spent on improving the declassification system? So in essence, you would tie an expansion of the IC to a tie, you tie it to an expansion of resources going to the declassification and classification management system. I had not previously thought of that, sort of an indexed resourcing of declassification efforts. I'll have to give that one some thought. Thank you. The other issue about funding, because you're here, the PIDB itself is really not funded. And so we operate with the grace of the archives. There was an effort last Congress to specifically allocate funds to the PIDB. And as we all know, the funding process in Congress can be challenging. But as you mentioned that oftentimes there are these mandates to the PIDB. How about any effort to identify expressly funding for the PIDB to performance mission? And I know that it goes both ways too, right? Because the ISU has also said that it exhausts its resources supporting the PIDB and that it could use a separate stream. That is certainly something worth considering. It cuts across jurisdictions of committees. So it's not purely the Senate Intelligence Committee. So we will have to talk to a number of stakeholders in Congress to make that happen. Speaking of talking to Senator Wyden and Senator Moran who are on the, I think Senator Moran is on the appropriations committee, but Senator Wyden is on the, part of the challenge in this world is like the authorizers and the policy guys. But you guys, Senator Wyden and Senator Moran had a bill to do a lot of things last Congress. Or do you expect that the senators are gonna reintroduce it? And what do you think is a path for legislation to solve this problem? So the legislation, as I mentioned, was the one to implement the PIDB's recommendation to designate the DNI as the executive agent for declassification. We don't know whether or not we'll reintroduce that. Part of it is that the senators are looking to the DNI to take a leadership role on this regardless of whether or not she's formally designated the executive agent. They do feel like they have a strong partnership with the DNI. So hopefully some of this can come about regardless of the actual codification of that recommendation, but it's still on the table. And as I mentioned, the Most Recent Intelligence Authorization Act asked the PIDB for an update on that particular recommendation. So it's still under consideration. One more. So obviously the intelligence community isn't the only place where classified information is produced. An enormous amount of classified information is produced at DOD. It's considered operational information. The Department of Energy produces a lot of classified information that's not from the intelligence community. What is your sense of the other committees that do have jurisdiction over DOE and DOD outside of the IC? What is their appetite for reforming the system? It's a shared system. They're kind of all in it together. And many of the problems are the same. What's the work like with them? So that's a good question. I will say that we could use more interactions with between the committees. Congress gets siloed sometimes. And if there was ever a subject that required working across not just federal government agencies but committees of different jurisdiction in Congress, this is it. I know there is interest. I recalled a hearing recently. Senator Warren at the Armed Services Committee was very interested in this topic. So I'm quite sure that the interest in declassification reform is not limited to the Intelligence Committee. I actually want to change a little bit the topic because I think one of the things that we've talked a lot about is this idea that we have this amazing proliferation of records. And if you think about what has happened in recent years as we've sort of gone to electronic records, the number of records that are out there has just exploded because we make more records from a practical standpoint. And so we've been thinking a lot, of course, about how to deal with it systematically. But I think one of the things that we've heard from Congress as there's description of our work over the past year suggests is that we've gotten sort of discrete projects about things that are of particular interest to Congress. So things on the Marshall Islands, on the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, some other specific topics, for example. What do you think the mechanism should be for prioritization of classification review in those worlds? Is there a role for Congress to play in particular? Is there a role for the public to play? Is there a role for specifically historians to play? How do you think about that sort of question of prioritization recognizing that we're probably not going to be in a place where everything immediately gets declassified, as much as we might want to be a bit more systematic? So at the risk of not answering the question, all of the above. Congress plays a role, the public plays a role, historians play a role. And at the end of the day, any entity that is offering recommendations, whether or not it's you, or whether or not it's the archives, through the mandatory classification process, is going to have to make some subjective judgments. My experience on the Senate Intelligence Committee is that we get to go directly to the Intelligence Community. So that exchange can happen directly and easily and quickly. Sometimes they're responsive, sometimes they're not, but it's there. But other members of Congress and certainly the public don't necessarily have that. And so they do rely on a review and a decision to prioritize whoever, they may suggest it's really important. But at the end of the day, some judgment calls are going to be made because a lot of people have a lot of interests and a lot of different declassified topics. I wonder what Senator Wyden, how he would respond to the question of whose information is it? No, like it seems like there's a fundamental challenge here. As in his classified information belong to the executive branch or to... Who does it belong to? So I would say it belongs to the American public, but that doesn't necessarily mean they get to have it. Sounds like something I might tell my children and they wouldn't understand. So if it belongs to the American public, how can the American public get it? So through the declassification process, whether or not it's that, which is laid out in executive order 13526, after 25 years, after 50 years, history, historical documents through FOIA is an incredibly important piece of legislation that has done incredible service to the public over time through their members of Congress, returning back to where I come from. The public has a right to be represented by their members of Congress and their senators. And if they have a particular interest in a topic, they have a right to ask their members to seek its declassification. As for who it belongs to, that sounds a little bit like a longstanding constitutional question as to whether or not the executive branch and the president per se has ultimate authority over that, but I'm gonna leave that to Ben. Then you'll get a question back from me. Since you brought me into the conversation, I just wondered if you could, given your long service to the committee, to the Congress, to the country, I wonder if you could reflect of where you think we are right now. This is one of those topics that is talked about, a great deal, but is progress made and sometimes you can become a bit despairing as we talked about the explosion of electronic records. Alyssa mentioned the fact that, with just a click of a button, how easy it is to classify. Do you feel like we have any momentum now on the subject and topic and is there a way to sustain that momentum? Do you feel like progress is being made and attention being paid to it? It is impressive that the director of national intelligence has come to discuss the topic when there's a lot on any director's plate, but her plate in particular, whether Ukraine or other subjects. So I think we, I'll speak for myself, there's a certain amount of momentum right now on a topic that is not necessarily ever going to be glamorous in front page. So I just wondered, you have this benefit of a great deal of experience with the committee that not a lot of people have. So I just wondered your reflections on where we are over time. I'm sure you've been discussing this for more than two decades, just where you feel like today and are we in a place of progress or a place of, it's just one of those problems that's always in the too hard bucket. So I think there are sort of two separate issues there. One is this question of overall reform. And I think there is absolutely progress in so far as there's a lot more attention being paid to that. And I credit the PIDB and ISU and others for having sort of done the work to uncover this issue. And I think that the fact that the DNI is speaking here is testament to this interest. I think the fact that, not just a couple of senators, but the Senate Intelligence Committee as a whole is weighing on this is progress. At the end of the day though, the numbers I guess, and we'll speak for themselves, the declassifications will speak for themselves. Either the log jam gets resolved or it doesn't, right? And so we're gonna have to see what works and what doesn't. Things coming out after 25 years or 50 years as they should, right? Or are they still stuck? Does the system continue to choke on itself? And this is a process that we're gonna have to monitor all very, very carefully. Great, thank you so much, Evan. Really appreciate having you up here. And if you wanna say you're more than welcome, where I think we're gonna, I'm gonna do a little bit of a preview of where we're going on the front of the board in 2023 and then we are gonna open it up to audience questions. So get your questions ready. And we'll see if it goes, yeah, you're fine. So I do wanna talk a little bit about where we're going in 2023. I do wanna start with saying, so Ezra, we just changed leadership. There is no way I can keep up with the number of things that Ezra had the board do over the time. It's an amazing amount of leadership. And I'm so grateful for the way he ran the board in an incredibly non-partisan way and an incredibly active way. We did a ton over the course of the past year. So I am grateful that he's still on it. And I am looking forward to him continuing direct, to direct the energy for all of the things that we can do as a board. So just wanna start with that. And I also agree, thank you Carter for organizing this conference. I think it's a, we're helping organize the conference really, really a sort of big thing for us as a board too. So as we- We really need to, there are poor PIDB staff. Oh, yes. And we're because of our absence of funds are all back in Washington right now. So they labored tirelessly along with Ezra and the Clements Center too for putting up, but the staff is there watching back in DC having helped to prepare all of this. And without our, you know, dear budget from Congress, you know, they had to stay back. So they, we owe them our thanks as well. Yes, we owe them a huge, huge thank you. So, but I do wanna sort of go into the, what we want, what we plan to do in 2023. So I think we've previewed a lot of what we're talking about already. So one of the things that we wanna make sure as a board that we talk about are why all of these things matter. I think you've heard some of that today already, but we really wanna make sure that people understand that these have, that there's a historical implication that there is a sort of real-time world of trust in government that declassification and classification policy plays into. And those are important things for our democracy. And we, so we wanna make sure we have sort of processes that reflect that and that we have a channel for conversation about it. That from a board perspective, one of the things we're therefore gonna be focusing on a lot is the process piece. So as we talked a lot about, we're gonna be working on recommendations for the new executive order. We wanna get public input on recommendations for the new executive order. We're really trying to think about what we can recommend and really thinking about some of the questions that we've talked about today. So they, again, is there a way to sort of systematically handle explosion of electronic records? How do we think about questions of prioritization? How do we think about systems of classification in general? How do they all fit together? How do we think about how the, are there any recommendations we can make about how the agencies work, how agencies work together for the federal government? So we're gonna be spending a fair amount of time on that. We also have some outstanding things that we are continuing to work on. So for example, as we mentioned that there'd been a lot of progress on the JFK records, that's certainly something that we're gonna continue to follow. Because again, even after all this time, the JFK assassination records are not all declassified. So we wanna make sure people understand the standards. If there are records that are appropriately still classified, people understand why, what does that look like? Not again on the specifics necessarily, but at least being able to talk about that. We as a board often talk about the fact that the reality of classified records, sometimes just withholding a single record makes people distrust things because they know there's a record out there. And so making sure there's some visibility into what that looks like, making sure that there's a public understanding potentially of why records get withheld and sort of pushing to the extent that we can on those ideas of public interest. I think we also have a report to Congress that is coming up again, where we wanna talk about some of those things. As Evan mentioned, we continue to get taskings from Congress on specific things that we can provide support for. So we wanna be responsive to those. We also wanna think about whether what we found actually on the individual classification requests that we have gotten over the course of the past year is that sometimes the board isn't the best entity to think about declassification process, but there can be an absence of who is the best entity. So Evan talked about a lot of the different channels that Congress goes through to potentially get things declassified. They tend to be informal channels. They tend to be things like, someone's going through confirmation, they get commitments, they tend to be letters back and forth. And those can be incredibly effective, but it also sort of raises those questions of prioritization that I mentioned before. Should there be a more systematic process for Congress to be able to ask for declassification records? What does that look like? And so we're gonna be exploring those too. And as always happens over the course of the year, there are always record sets that become incredibly important. We believe we have an important role to play in sort of talking about those publicly and encouraging more transparency with respect to what's happening. So that's kind of what we, some of the things that we have on tap for 2023, we're very much looking forward to it. And of course this conference, which we're also, we're planning on picking all the brains that we can to think about how we move forward over the course of the next year. So I don't know if anyone has questions. We're happy to take questions now if anyone wants to come up. If you have a question. Oh yeah, please come to the microphone. Come to the microphone here. Just please can line up. And for anyone who's again, and for anyone who is participating virtually, there's also a way to submit a virtual question. Again, that is PIDB at nara.gov. And this is the first time we're doing this in three years. Yeah, so we're a little rusty at answering questions, be sympathetic. Hi, my name is Matthew Monroe. I appreciate the steps towards transparency measures at the DOD and DNI Haines have been moving towards. It has been noted by a former agent of the Air Force Office of the Special Investigations that the UFO incident involving Betty Cash, Vicki Landrum and Colby Landrum still classified. As a child, I was within 10 miles of this incident that occurred in my community near New Guinea, Texas in December of 1980. This was an actual event with physiological effects that have been noted as possible exposure to radiation. The incident still has an unsolved component. If this event involved a nuclear propulsion malfunction of a test aircraft, what steps are necessary to declassify information either from the Department of Energy or other departments of the government to clear the air on this historic case? Well, I can just say that we're, thank you for your question. We're not, I'm not familiar with that. I don't, it's the first we've heard of that. You can send an email. I didn't catch the name and everything. But look, I think there's been a lot recently said and it's been covered in the media about the efforts of the current administration and the past administration to get to the bottom. A lot of these reported UAP incidents. And it's a very challenging topic because there's a massive amount of records that could relate to different potential events all across the government. But I'd appreciate if you just send in your, that name. Thank you. I'll just add, I think the question also points to we've talked about some of the mandatory declassification rules that are out there. And frankly, the backlog at a number of those departments that you specified, whether it's 25 or 50 year mandatory declassification reviews, you know, those cues and those backlogs are longer than they should be. So, you know, those records to the extent there are records relating to something should be subject to mandatory declassification reviews for those kinds of time frames. There's other things in terms of MDR requests that can be made from the public to the departments and of course FOIA being a very powerful tool, particularly for older records. So it does bring up the larger subject and the importance of transparency and why it's important to clear those backlogs and adhere to the rules on mandatory declassification review. So if there are issues out there that can clear the air and we don't have misunderstandings or it creates a level of distrust that is unnecessary, it's one of the reasons, and Alyssa talked about hopefully we're gonna be bringing why declassification is so important as part of our work in 2023. So thank you for the question. My name is Matthew Connolly and I've been following the work of the PIDB and ISU for many years now and I just wanna commend all of you on the activism that you've shown in the last couple of years. And I really also just speaking for myself, I like how it is that you're using your mandate to address issues that really are a very great public interest. I'd like to see even more studies like the ones that you've done, issues that many American citizens would like to know more about with the access that you have, according to your legal mandate, at least in theory, you could tell us all a lot more about things that many people would like to hear about. But on the other hand, I'm really to be honest, kind of disappointed that we don't have more urgency from Congress about these problems. Just to take an example, 10 years ago, the Obama administration directed the office of Director of National Intelligence to develop new technology, to accelerate declassification and all of us, including your predecessors and the PIDB, all of you expected that IARPA was gonna take up this challenge and they did nothing. They just completely ignored it. So I'd like to think things might be different now with Director Haynes. I wonder though, if she really does think that it's under-resourced, DARPA has a multi-billion dollar budget. IARPA, we don't know how big these budgets are. Certainly, if they wanted it to be a priority, they could make it a priority. They could resource this adequately because everyone agrees that we have to develop technology to accelerate declassification. And if they won't, why can't Congress? Why can Congress start your marketing funds to develop technology to accelerate declassification? I was a little surprised that when Ezra Cohen asked, why couldn't there be a formula? If you're gonna keep increasing the budget of 18 different intelligence agencies every single year, why couldn't you develop a formula? One I like is the idea that if, for example, the Pentagon is spending some $600 million a year on public relations and advertising, why couldn't they spend the equivalent amount of reviewing classified information and releasing it to the public? So there is tremendous public interest. If there aren't more people here, it's just because people don't even know the PIDB exists. And how is it that with 1.3 million people having top secret security clearances, a Pentagon with an $800 billion budget, you can't earmark funds for the information security oversight office. I think it has a staff of about a dozen people and they're meant to be the watchdog that's meant to oversee all this. Why can't you appropriate some money for something that every single American like to understand better? Thank you. Thank you for that. And I won't put Evan on the spot on that one. I think we certainly agree about the importance of it. And I think one of the things that we think of as a board is really putting some pressure on exactly that area. We really, I think some of it is attention, right? So I think one of the things actually that senators Moran and Wyden have done really well is actually take it up from a congressional standpoint, but Congress is a complicated entity. It's got lots of different players and it doesn't always get maybe where it should. And again, it ends up as a challenging set of priorities. I will say, I think just on the question of records overall, I think we all think that there's one of the reasons we're so excited about having a technology panel tomorrow is because we think there's incredible potential for long-term technology changes that could actually help some of these things. That doesn't mean that AI is solving our problems necessarily, but the idea that things could be faster or prioritize more, found in a better way or we could reduce discrepancies between classification decisions. Any of those things is a positive. And so I think long-term, we do think, going back to I think Ben's question, we are seeing some momentum now and I like to think that we're seeing some momentum. So hopefully you will too. And I'm seeing them growing and your question points out. And I think we have to continue to talk about these issues and that's how change will happen. The ISOO mandate to get a little bit into the weeds, but as you pointed out, they have a massive mandate and very little staff and very little resources for when you read their mandate is a government spanning mandate for supervising classification system and a variety of tasks. And as you pointed out, the resources don't match the authorities in the mandate and we continue to talk about these things and we've got some leadership there on the Congress. Having a open hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee is not a minor thing. We have some people with some additional background here besides that is a big deal and hopefully we won't lose that momentum but that is continuing to bring the attention to it as the way change will happen. I'd like to just say two things in response to that, to your comment. First of all, there are enormous inefficiencies in the system. A lot of this could be improved by fixing those inefficiencies. For instance, why does one agency have 25 different guides on how to classify information and they don't agree with each other? Why do different agencies think that the same piece of information is classified at different levels? Why isn't there a IC-wide classification guide? Those are just a few things I just threw out right now that could really cut down the timeline on a lot of the things, a lot of the delays. So I think we do have to act. If we don't act quickly on fixing these inefficiencies we are gonna be in really bad shape because the volume of records especially digital records is increasing at an exponential rate. And then the second thing regarding ISU. I mean, the board has talked about and I think it's something to consider in the executive order. Should ISU even be at the National Archives? The National Archives has a historical look back mandate. The ISU is really supposed to be looking forward making sure that rules are being followed moving forward. And so I think there's a real question to be had. Does it belong where it is right now? I would just jump in quickly and just thank Evan for being here to hear some of this stuff. I mean, Senator Wyden is one of the great proponents of transparency and open government. So you're preaching to his choir or something and thank you for coming in and listening to that side of our harping and questions. Yeah, like, but thanks again for coming. Yeah, sorry about that. So the information security oversight office, according to, you know, Robert Gates, Richard Neustadt, you know, wanted to put it, you know, either in the office of management and budget or they wanted to put it in the office of White House counsel and failing that in the National Security Council because they knew that unless it was in a part of the executive branch that had real authority, it would be ignored. And so what did they do? They put it in general services administration. And then later, you know, as you know, when the National Archives hived off, it took Ishii with it. But I absolutely agree with you. That was the original idea of Ishii was that it was gonna be in a part of the executive branch with that that would have real authority over the rest of the executive branch. And so yes, it would be fantastic if we could revisit that. So thank you. Great. Hi, I'm Jamie. I'm an undergrad at UT. So how come? So in the event that the reforms that you've guys at the PIDB have been asking for a few years end up do getting passed. And if that ends up happening because of the political outcry because of the Biden stuff and the Trump stuff and the Penn stuff and whatever ends up coming out in the next couple of days. Is there a possibility that the PIDBs and NARA's mission as a non-political entity or an apolitical entity in a non-partisan mission is there a possibility that that gets threatened because of that? So I actually think a lot of the things that we're talking about really are good government efforts. And I think that you can always take things and politicize them one way or another. That's always possible. I think one of the things that we've done very well as a board is keep an eye on things that are good government oriented. And so that doesn't mean there aren't there isn't a political maelstrom at times. Although I think we might always surprise we've worked a little, you know I think Ben sort of alluded to this, you know, you don't really expect this to be on the front page. But I think the reality of thinking about reforms, look, if we can do something that is lasting and systemic if that will be an improvement for government it will be an improvement for transparency and it will be a good thing for all of us. And I think that's really what we're all striving for. Yeah. And I would just like to thank you for the question. I don't think the PITibs would be threatened by this. I think there's bipartisan support for what we're doing. They're just realizing in the administration and Congress that this is expensive and we have to make difficult choices and prioritize but all of our recommendations to the president this year were unanimous. We never had a dissenting vote on the PITib. These are things that people on both sides can agree with. We don't feel threatened. We think we have support. It's just we're trying to publicize this as much as we can. And can be good for national security. Like the default in the national security community has been to not share. And maybe we're seeing some ramifications of that now institutionally and go ahead. Yeah. And it fuels conspiracy theories. And the 9-11 records weren't released for 18 years or 20 years. We just pushed and got them released this year. There was nothing conspiratorial about them. It's just, but it looked bad that it took so long and it was because they didn't have the resources to process the records. So we think this is good government because it will dispel some of these rumors. Following up on Carter's point as well. I think what we've actually seen from the national security world is that people recognize that being siloed is actually bad for national security. You end up with overlap. You end up with duplication. You end up with people who should know certain things that they don't and that's a potential long-term problem. So I think hopefully one of the things I think D&I Haynes has actually focused on is the idea that having a system of classification and declassification that is effective is good for national security. It shouldn't endanger national security. It's actually a positive. I'll just add one other thing on that. And when you look at what are the national security challenges that are facing this country, a lot of them are gonna require us to work with our allies and partners, especially when we look towards the Pacific. And so this really becomes about are we hindering our ability to succeed around the world because we're guarding everything. We're guarding everything so much that we can't share with our allies. We can't bring them into certain places where we're gonna need their help. And so again, this is not about just coming in and just saying we're declassifying everything. It's about building a better system. And I think that we're on a very, very good footing right now to start working on building a better system. Hi, Mike Kizakoff with Yahoo News. Obviously this entire issue is getting a lot more attention these days because of the discovery of classified records at the office and home of presidents, Trump, Biden and now vice president Pence. Leaving aside all questions of whether there's any criminal culpability by anybody here, there are some real legitimate public policy issues that arise from this. And one that leaps out at me is one would assume that when a record gets classified, when a document gets classified or an email, there's a record kept of that. Yet we know in the case of Trump, the archives was aware he had records that should have been returned to them. But in the case of President Biden and Vice President Pence, there seems to, these records seem to have been sitting there for years in some cases without anybody at the archives or the intelligence community being aware that they were missing. How is that possible? And is that something that the board would address as part of the project you're involved in? So I actually think I'll be interested to hear whether folks have thoughts on it. But I actually think it's a reflection of the explosion that we were talking about before. So if you think about how classified information works for imagine you're dealing with something that is a classified fact, you're writing a new document, you end up having to put it in, you print it off, you have, there isn't a sort of marking for it because there's so many records for each document in the way that you might think. There are for very sensitive records but it doesn't quite work the way you might think for sort of the long-term, the long tail of classified records. And I think... Audit, there's nobody keeps track of what records have been classified. So I'm gonna actually turn it over to Pauline Welles in two seconds. But the thing I would say about it is that we, I think that the system that we wanna go to, the more forward-looking thing, I actually think that we can do a better job of protecting secrets if we have a smaller number of things that are secrets, right? And we can do a better inventory. We can have more sort of controls on it if we are more confident that that's the system. So I do think that going to the sort of root of your question about is this something that we would address? I think that as we think about what the system looks like, protecting the information that we have to protect has gotta be part of that process. We're the public interest declassification board. I think we all recognize that classified information is a reality and should be a reality. There are things that shouldn't be out in public. And so it's, but it's coming up with the right balance for those things and then making sure that we do a good job of protecting. To answer your question, which is a very interesting one. When the allies invaded Normandy Operation Overlord, there were printed copies with numbers on them, I believe, and there was a set of them and everybody knew and there were no photocopy machines. And so you did know where they all were. And for certain important documents, there still are. But in the main, that has moved in the last several decades to a system where we do not have numbered copies of most classified documents. And so I could print off five copies, give them to administrative officials and would not necessarily have a copy. They don't have cover pages and being pouches and everything, but we wouldn't necessarily, and they could say we've destroyed the copies and we don't check on that. But so there aren't numbered copies anymore for most classified documents. So it would be hard to know where. The large part of this has to do with, you don't know if something's missing if you don't know what you have. So there's kind of an outbound problem as well, so I think that this is really where the board's been going, which is we need a digital system, an AI-driven digital system that isn't just back end going back to try to free up the backlog. We need to be applying those methodologies on the front end. One, as Alyssa said, to reduce overclassification. But also we need to do a better job of knowing what we're creating, what records we're creating. Now, of course, there's no fail-safe system and the White House is always dealing with a million issues. People are printing things out. But again, it's very hard to know what you're missing if you don't know what you have. And when you look like we did with the Marshall Islands study, the cost of digitizing these physical records. So obviously before digital, everything was physical. There's still a lot that hasn't been digitized. For classified records, you're looking at 32 cents a page. If you're talking about billions of pages of records and the archives, I think, only has a $500 million budget, I think there's a problem. There's just a math problem. So we need to get an AI-driven system in and on the front end. We're gonna be talking about that tomorrow so that we have a better idea of knowing what we have. Just wanted to follow up on this. You've all talked about the explosion and the number of classified documents. Can you quantify that, how many we're talking about? Can you break it down? Top secret, secret, confidential. So it is a, that is a phenomenal question. That's classified. They're joking, it's classified. Yeah, yeah. So actually, so there's actually some interesting background on that because ISU has tried to quantify it in terms of overclassification and quantify the cost as well. So thinking about what that actually looks like in practice and then thinking about it is a cost to the public. You have to store records. So the more records you have, the more storage space you have. It has to be certified to a certain level so that it can maintain classified information. There's a whole backend that has costs. So there's actually a benefit to us thinking about exactly those questions and thinking about numbers for that reason. Is there a number? It is for the same reason that Ezra flagged, they started coming up with numbers and then they realized that they were not good numbers and they went back to the drawing board and I don't think that we currently have a set of numbers. There are the Department of Defense, all of the IC agencies, the Department of Energy. Everybody is producing classified records on different systems that don't talk to each other. Again, we need to do a better job of knowing what we have. And so we don't have an answer for you. I wish we did. That agency's right to Congress and one of them, I believe, talks about the number of classified records but I'm not sure which report that... In terms of petabytes, just to give you an idea. Hi, Dustin Voltz with the Wall Street Journal. I'm also speaking on a panel tomorrow so I hope you all come by for that one. I'd like to stay on the topic that my previous two question askers asked about the Biden, Trump, and now Pence document seizures. Just Evan, I'm curious from your perspective in Congress and I stepped in a bit late, so sorry if you did already address this. From a legislative standpoint, the things that you mentioned, Senators Wyden and Moran and others are interested in, do you think that this does complicate efforts politically to get something forward? Does it potentially make it more interesting for lawmakers? I'm just curious if you think this will have any substantive impact on that. Recognizing the issues are not necessarily directly linked. And then a second question for the board itself. There may be a time soon when the public is, I think already quite interested in knowing what are in the different stashes of classified documents that have been recovered from former President Trump, President Biden and former Vice President Pence. Putting aside the criminal aspects again, which we'll have to play out their course. I'm curious if any of you think that the public interest declassification board could serve a role at some point, assessing those documents and seeing what, if any of them should be released to the public, especially as at least two of those, actually all three of those politicians that I mentioned may be running for president in the next presidential election. That seems like that would be a very dense timeline, but there does appear to be, as some of you have mentioned before, no other real mechanism for there to be a review in the public interest of sets of classified documents. So in light of that, is that something any of you have considered? Has anyone in Congress or elsewhere asked you to think about that possibility? What else would you have to say about that? Thank you. I'll mind, or do you wanna go first or? The answer is I don't know. This need to reform the declassification system is been going on for a long time. It's very bipartisan. It's almost nonpartisan. It gets in the weeds and everything from technology to minor provisions of the executive order. My hope is that what is going on now with these classified records, I don't know whether I'll have any impact, but I hope it doesn't get in the way of the momentum that we have here are necessarily complicated because as Alyssa said, this is basic good governance. It's not political. It's not part of a campaign. It's not being talked about all the time on cable news, but it has to happen and it has to happen in a bipartisan way for anything meaningful to happen. So it doesn't necessarily have to be linked to the headlines of the day. I actually wanna follow up on that point. That's what, and to answer the second question, because I think it actually goes back to the question of how do you stay out of the politics of it? And one of the things I think we've done very well as a board is think about things that are long-term. We've thought about systemic change. We've thought about categories of records that are, things like 9-11 that are big historical events. And those decisions were intentional. We think it's really important for us to be in that world, recognizing that there are things that are likely to come out about the documents in one shape or another. We don't actually think through the most part that that is the right role for the board because again, the idea is not for the board to be used for political purposes. And so, yes, there's information that is absolutely in the public interest, but there is a lot of information that is classified that is in the public interest to know. We have to pick wisely to make sure that we are able to make recommendations long-term that are good government-oriented. Alex Howard, also a proponent of open government for a long time. Thank you for hosting a public meeting in the public space. We haven't seen so many of these for years. Thank you also for making it available to the members of the media and for committing to post it on YouTube afterwards. That's all a great model for a public body, especially one that seeks to, I think, enhance the public conversation about these things. I think the reviving of your blog has been great and it's good to see you all on Twitter, although I hope that you continue to engage carefully there. One of the great things that happened last year in the space is when we saw President of the United States decide to declassify information that was a public import about what we knew about another nation state intending to invade another country and then make sure that that got out to the public. So it was not just declassified, but it was disclosed and then disseminated to the process of public engagement. And it was a great example of how then we were able to have a public consensus about what was happening in the world. And this is a challenge these days since we had to see some differences of opinion about what's actually happening, the causes of our planet warming, whether there's a disease which is causing people to die, whether the different things are effective about treating it, monoculating people against it and so on. So establishing public facts is very important in our democracy seems to me that you all have an extraordinary trust with trying to get the outcome we had last year where you had declassification and disclosure. But I come to this meeting and you described a reported declassification review. Now we all know folks in Politico, well, maybe we don't all know, but Politico reported there was a declassification review going on. I had not looked and found a place where you all have talked about that where there was a press conference where the president talked about that where we've seen a White House re-establish its open government initiative at WhiteHouse.gov slash open. Have you all been approached by the administration to comment upon that review in a public way? I'm sorry, I don't know. So we know that there's an existence of a memorandum the National Security Council is looking at this issue. You know, the president's asking to do that. The update of the executive order. So why don't we have more ongoing narration of that review in a public face and the way in the same way that you're offering this public narration of your work? So that's a question there. And the second, I really appreciated the letter that you sent to the White House regarding transparency plans. And I'm curious why those plans were in a commitment in our United States National Action Plan for Open Government, which came out in December. And if any of you are aware that such action plan existed or if we might see that as a commitment in the United States domestic commitments in the summit for democracy since this administration is talking about government transparency again since we can see the connection between engagement and informing the public if we might see some real investment in participatory democracy to improve public trust which is all you know is very low and the extent to which that's been created by information voids which could have perhaps been closed continues. And my colleagues in the media have pointed out not disclosing what's happened can create conspiracies. We're seeing that right now with respect to the White House's stance on this. Like there was an information void created by not speaking up by saying things weren't discovered in them. Are you gonna be more public about offering your perspectives on these issues in a way that would help inform and shape the public conversation to bring it into the very media issues you're talking about to get to the outcomes you want. Because with all due respect I don't think the Senate hearing is the deliverable. I think that passing legislation and implementing it is so that we get public trust back so that when we have the next national security issue we don't have another million American stuff. So thank you very much for your work and I look forward to your conference tomorrow. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your comments. The one thing I will say on that the one thing I will say on that is I think we all recognize that we all play different roles in government. So from a practical standpoint, we are an external board. We advise we do as much as we can on transparency. Again, the goal for us in that exact executive order that you're talking about is to put out a public report with recommendations that are informed by the public. And that is really why one of the reasons that we brought that up today because that's exactly where we want to go. So the piece on transparency, we're just sort of starting that process. So from a practical standpoint, we're anticipating that we will be more public but we're probably early days. So, but the goal again is to sort of take input, put things out, be more public, put things out on the blog as we get them, do a public report and we'll have recommendations to Congress as well, that will also be public. So. And just to add something, we did notice that President Biden's statement declassifying intelligence on Russian invasion plans was a remarkably successful declassification and that this was an example of the good that could come from declassification and we're trying to work this into a larger thing. But we certainly noticed that and want to stress it. So I think it looks like we don't have any more questions right now. And one thing I will say is that on that same theme of transparency, if folks do have questions that they want to, want us to answer after the fact, please do email pidb.nara.gov. We will answer them on our blog. So again, we are trying very hard to be public even when we don't tweet that much. So, but thank you everyone for coming today. We really appreciate having you all here. Thank you again to the PIDB staff who we are sad not to have here today and for hosting us here for the Clemens Center. And I just want to make sure everyone knows that the DNI fireside chat is at 6 30 PM in the auditorium. So please join us there as well. Thank you again.