Bloodless Coup

Cold War Realists Better Get Started Cleaning Out Their Books

They might be holding classified information.

Yes, it's the next installment of the re-classification follies! Although it's incorrect to say reclassification, because some of this stuff was never classified in the first place.

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

...

Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials strive to properly apply rules governing what should be classified and are researching why the missile information cited in the archive report was blacked out. The report was released Friday.

"The Department of Defense takes the responsibility of classifying information seriously," Ryder said. "This includes classifying information at the lowest level possible."

Baltar is more acquainted with this stuff than I am, but I imagine that this information is fairly widely circulated (in some circles). What happens to anyone who cites, reprints, or discusses the information?