After 9/11, U.S. archivists pulled 1 million pages

Other researchers said the project, while well-intentioned, reinforces a culture of secrecy that became more pronounced after the September 2001 terror attacks.

“You want government to be vigilant when it comes to security, but you also want them to behave responsibly,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs the government secrecy project for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. “You can’t have a situation where secrecy becomes the default mode.”

Many of the removed records might be useful to terrorists, according to the AP’s review. Archivists removed records from the U.S. Surgeon General’s Preventive Medicine Division, which studied biological weapons created between 1941 and 1947.

Other records withdrawn don’t appear to be useful to terrorists. Archivists removed information from a 1960 Bureau of Indian Affairs report on enrollments in the Alaska’s Tlingit and Haida tribes because it included Social Security numbers, which could be used for identity theft.

A 1960 map of the Melton Hill Reservoir in east Tennessee — now perhaps best-known as a spring training site for collegiate rowing teams around the eastern United States — was removed from view, as were 1967 architectural drawings for the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

In e-mails and memos obtained by the AP, archives employees made it clear they were trying to minimize the number and scope of removals. In an internal e-mail, the No. 2 archives official expressed satisfaction at finding fewer and fewer papers that should be removed. “All quiet on records of concern front,” wrote Lewis Bellardo. “Just the way we like it.”

Archives officials generally have received passing marks from secrecy experts who have been aware of the program, said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a George Washington University-based research institute. But Blanton also said the effort appears to be a case of misplaced priorities.

“Government’s first instinct is to hide vulnerabilities, not to fix them,” said Blanton. “And that doesn’t make us safer.”

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