Ali Watkins | Huffington Post | 19 Nov 2014
WASHINGTON — In mid-January of this year, a small request was slipped quietly to the National Archives and Records Administration, the lord of the U.S. government’s record-keeping operations. One government agency’s method for storing documents was clogging up its system, and it just wanted permission to clear out some of its emails.
The National Archives gave the proposal a temporary nod in August, and the Central Intelligence Agency was granted the ability to erase certain email records.
The tentative approval of the new record-keeping strategy has set off a firestorm between the CIA and its critics, including the agency’s congressional overseers. The CIA insists that it’ll actually be keeping more extensive records under the new system. But the agency’s watchdogs say the emails are vital to the oversight process, and that, due to its history of secrecy, the CIA shouldn’t be trusted to judge what’s worth saving and what isn’t.
