This is CBS, I Am the World, I'm John Batchett.

Classification, overclassification, revelations of secrets or non-secrets these last weeks

much in the news, the conduct of an airman yet to be determined has introduced again the

question, open question for many years I learned.

Does the U.S. government overclassify endlessly classify making the job of being the U.S. government

more and more difficult year to year?

I welcome Henry Sikolsky, the executive director of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education

Center.

You will recall that Henry and I have discussed a document produced by the NPEC in these

last weeks about overclassification prior to the revelations about these secrets being

spread around the internet by a bad actor.

But here we have the U.S. Senate organizing a response to the assumption that overclassification

is damaging the national security of the United States and reapprises me that there are

now two bills in the Senate.

One bill advanced by Senator Cornyn of Texas, one bill advanced by Senator Warner of Texas,

both bills signed down by both sides, in other words this is bipartisan affair.

One bill is entitled the Sensible Classification Act of 2023.

The other bill is entitled the Classification Reform Act of 2023.

These are parallel bills to be worked out in the fashion of the Senate.

I note however that the body of the bills are not wildly dissimilar.

We're looking at creating an apparatus that can judge documents to be overclassified

or out of date like a used by date in a grocery store.

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