John Cornyn: “on another matter, last Friday I was in Austin, my home, and had the opportunity to speak at a conference that included…”

“on another matter, last Friday I was in Austin, my home, and had the opportunity to speak at a conference that included some of the leading experts in all things dealing with declassification and government transparency. It was cohosted by a number of academic institutions in Texas and the Public Interest Declassification Board, or PIDB. Most of us had never heard of this group before, but the PIDB leads incredible work to help advise the President and the executive branch on ways to modernize the classification and declassification processes which safeguard our national security but also protect public trust in our institutions. I joined an onstage conversation with my friend Will Inboden, who leads the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. We talked about the circumstances under which classification is important. Controlling access to certain sensitive information enables the United States to remain at least one step ahead of our adversaries. It also protects sources and methods that allow us to collect clandestine intelligence and protect the lives of those intelligence professionals who are engaged in collecting that information, as well as the avenues into those sources that are important to collecting this intelligence.…”