What’s in a Name? That’s Classified, Even 40 Years Later

Conrad began to recall his high school days in the mid-1960s at Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya. In the course of that recollection, the senator said: “Five blocks away lived a relative of mine who happened to be the CIA station chief, Harden Smith.”
It was a throwaway line, but in fact, it was classified because CIA station chiefs are covert operatives. After the hearing, the Budget Committee got a call from the Pentagon requesting that the panel delete the line from its official transcript, which it did. On the committee’s Web site, most hearings are available on Real Video, but clicking on the link to watch the March 1 hearing brings up “file not found.”
Conrad was not the only one who was asked to delete the information. Congressional Quarterly, which posts transcripts of hearings on CQ.com, likewise was asked to remove this one. The request to CQ, like that to the Budget Committee, came not from the CIA but from the Pentagon’s Office of Legislative Affairs. It did not come until a month after the hearing, without explanation of the putative security risk. CQ declined.
There’s nothing wrong with the government asking news organizations to delete information that it deems to be classified, as long as there’s no explicit or implied threat of retaliation against the news outlet, said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. But in this case, he said, there does not appear to be a security imperative that justifies a deletion.