David Skaggs: “a free and democratic country such as ours faces a peculiar predicament in trying to deal with secrets, with spying…”

“a free and democratic country such as ours faces a peculiar predicament in trying to deal with secrets, with spying, with the activities of the intelligence community in a way that is as consistent as possible with our democratic values and the principles of open government. It is a ticklish and delicate responsibility that this committee undertakes on behalf of the full membership of the House. I just want to commend both the gentleman from Texas, our chairman, and our ranking member from Washington State and the fine staff that the committee has for this ongoing effort. One of the things that we are able to talk about in debate and in the open is the efforts that are ongoing to try to deal with the system of classification of national security information. This bill continues the effort that has been under way for a couple of years now to push the intelligence community, both with regard to greater discipline in classifying information and improved activity toward declassification of old material or material that no longer really has national security significance, so that as much as possible we can bring the records of this Government into the public domain, when they present no further risk to national security, and honor as much as we possibly can the important principle that this is the people's government and they ought to know as much as they can about what goes on.”