The Public Interest Declassification Board held a public meeting in the Senate Visitor Center of the U.S. Capitol on January 14, 2026. The event featured remarks from Senator Wyden, Senator Slotkin, Congresswoman Luna, and Brett Eagleson (representing 9/11 families), an overview of 9/11 records that remain classified, and potential avenues to reform the national security classification and declassification systems. The Board expresses hearty thanks to Senator Cornyn and Senator Wyden and their staffs for making the event possible.
Thank you to all who attended the meeting in person or viewed the livestream. If you were unable to attend, or would like to share the recording with others, we have included the video and the link for your convenience.
The Board looks forward to continued public engagement on these important issues.
I had my declassification request approved. I support declassification reform because the whole truth needs to be available for the American public. I yield my time.
I watched the 14 January public meeting (which was made difficult by the posting of an inaccurate link).
I was a declassifier for the Dept. of Energy and the Dept. of the Air Force for a combined 23 years. I believe it is naive to think that merely relying on security classification guides (SCGs) would be sufficient to create automatic declassification algorithms. Training documents — large volumes of classified documents that have been manually reviewed for declassification by sanitization, or fully declassified and released documents that also have been manually reviewed — are mandatory for any kind of usable automatic declass system, and will be more valuable than SCGs.
It is also naive to believe that a single government-wide SCG could be created. The basic requirement that people desiring access to classified information must have a “need to know” rules out the combining of all agency SCGs into a single guide. There are SCGs whose availability is restricted to people with a need to know because of the sensitivity of the information in those guides. These could not be part of a single government-wide SCG.
Specifically on the release of 9/11 records, I would urge the Board to direct declassification efforts to those records that are actual 9/11 records. As an Air Force reviewer working on the JFK collection, I had two AF records originated by the FBI (in 1969 and 1970) which had absolutely nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. It looks like someone just saw “Cuba” in the documents and assigned them to the collection. I assume a similar situation might be found for 9/11 records which mention “Saudi Arabia” or similar terms related to 9/11 but have nothing at all to do with the attacks on that day.
Lastly, I repeat for the umpteenth time that the PIDB needs members with declassification experience, not just lawyers. The lack of such experience on the Board becomes evident with some of the suggested remedies to the declassification backlog.