NOTE: This transcript is based upon a recording of the symposium which includes the simulataneous English-translation of the Japanese-speaking participants. Some editing has been made to clarify this translation without in any way altering the original meaning. Dr. Wampler would like to acknowledge the services of Mary Ellison and Professional Word Processing in preparing the draft transcription.
MODERATOR: And now, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for waiting. Now we're going to commence the Japan-U.S. Symposium entitled the Internationalization of Japan and Open Government. This symposium is organized by the Japanese Association for American Studies, the National Security Archive, and the Yomiuri Shimbun, and with sponsorship from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. We will be discussing open government, and also the people's right to know. We will have the very first full-scale discussion and symposium on this issue.
In the first session, the morning session, we will be deliberating upon democracy and freedom of information, and in the afternoon session we will be talking about the obstacles to reform and proposed agenda for change. First of all, let us invite Mr. Yoshinori Horikawa, the General Manager and Editor, to make an opening address on behalf of the organizers. Well, as a matter of fact, we were supposed to have him make an opening speech, but due to the traffic jam we would like to immediately start the first session. May we invite the Professor Igarashi from the University of Tokyo to take the moderatorship, please.
PROFESSOR TAKESHI IGARASHI: Good, morning, ladies and gentlemen, we would like to begin the first session. As he introduced me, my name is Igarashi from the University of Tokyo, and I happen to be the Executive Director of the Japanese Association for American Studies. I specialize in the diplomatic history of the United States myself, but today we are going to talk about the issue of the Internationalization of Japan and Open Government. That is our title in English.
With regard to the diplomatic documentation and the declassification for us who are studying diplomatic history, it is vital that this information is being published. However, looking at the situation of Japan and the United States respectively, for the sake of democracy, the publication of the information is, of course, important, needless to say. Also, in view of the international issues faced by Japan, and in order for Japan to become an open society to the rest of the world, it does have a very grave bearing. The Japanese government's publication of government information is very important. The U.S. current situation in various senses gives us a rich source of information, thus I would like to ask the speakers to refer to those points. That is how I have organized the sequence of the presentation. First of all, we will receive a presentation from Mr. Thomas Blanton, who is the Executive Director of the National Security Archive. Mr. Blanton, please.
MR. THOMAS BLANTON: Thank you, Professor Igarashi. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here today, on my first trip to Japan among such a distinguished gathering of scholars and policy-makers, journalists. I have many debts of gratitude, here, I should say thank you to the Yomiuri Shimbum, which has made this event possible, and has so strongly supported the work of the National Security Archive in the United States in documenting U.S.-Japan relations. I should thank the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, which has also been a generous supporter, both of the Archive's work and of this event. I should thank the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, for its strong support of this event, and, of course, the Japanese Association for American Studies, which has carried out so excellently the preparatory work for this event, as well as all my fellow panelists, and you the audience. Thank you for being with us today.
I am very much honored to be asked to make this talk about the history of the idea of freedom of information, and the work of the National Security Archive as a tangible expression of that idea. Our hosts and all of those involved in the event have been very generous in their praise of the National Security Archive's work, and I understand that the appropriate Japanese response to such flattery is to say, "Not at all," and to deflect the praise. This is a very attractive trait. I will give you an example of a more typically American response by Dr. Henry Kissinger.
During the 1970s, while engaged in his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, Dr. Kissinger was approached at an embassy party by a wealthy patroness of the arts and international affairs, who gripped both of his hands in hers and said breathlessly, "Oh, Dr. Kissinger, I simply wanted to thank you for saving the world." Never at a loss for words, Dr. Kissinger replied, "You're very welcome." Needless to say, the National Security Archive -- we have not yet saved the world. But then, neither has Dr. Kissinger.
In my talk today, I would like to avoid the missionary approach so often taken by us Americans. Instead, I would like to emulate the approach of one of my teachers at Harvard, the noted scholar of Asia John King Fairbank, who first came to this part of the world as the child of missionaries, spreading Christianity in Asia, but who spent his life trying, not to convert, but trying to understand the peoples of Asia. I am at the very beginning of my own understanding of Japan, and therefore I would like my talk today to be understood not as prescription, recommending what to do, but as description, how it has been done elsewhere.
My talk is in three parts. First, a brief history of the idea of freedom of information. Second, a discussion of how the idea is actually implemented, and the particular political conditions in which freedom of information becomes law. Third, the history of the National Security Archive as a tangible expression of freedom of information in action.
First, the history. In my research for this presentation, I came across what was, for me, a very surprising statement from a very highly placed Japanese source on the subject of open government and the need for open government, and I'll discuss that in a moment. And the reason I was surprised by that statement is that, up until now, I have always understood the idea of freedom of information to be a product of the rationalism and liberalism of the enlightenment, and particularly the ideological trend from the French Revolution on the rights of man, and the American Revolution on the checks and balances against government power. And I came today with a number of quotations from those thinkers -- liberal thinkers, utilitarian thinkers, rationalist thinkers -- who focused on the power of knowledge. For example, Cardinal Newman said about rationalism, liberty, and liberalism that, quote, "Virtue is the child of knowledge, and vice is the child of ignorance."
Or Jeremy Bentham, who said, "Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be a system of regular government." Bentham when on to say, "Everyone knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and we believe that it is a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety."
But the most famous quotation of all in this ideological history, came from James Madison, one of the authors of the American Constitution. He said, and I quote, "A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Now, as you can see, there are both principled and utilitarian reasons for these notions of freedom of information and open government, but let me return to that surprising quotation from a highly placed Japanese source. In preparation for my trip, I went back to my notes and my books from a course I took twenty years ago at Harvard with the late Edwin O. Reischauer, and I found this quote, which, in the translation I have may not be perfect, but it's what I have. The quote was, "Open deliberation shall be carried out, and all affairs of state shall be disposed of in conformity to public opinion." This was the first of the five imperial oaths uttered by the new Japanese emperor, on 14th March, 1868, at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration. Now, is this Meiji freedom of information?
I thought about it, and the words "public opinion" in that quote reminded me of a reference in Professor Chalmers Johnson's brilliant new book, "Japan, Who Governs?" and I went back to that book and found the reference on page 110. A distinction between public opinion politics or, excuse my pronunciation, seiron seiji, versus hidden politics, ura seiji. From Professor Johnson I learned there are many such dualities: kagemusha, or dummy general, versus kuromaku, a wire-puller. Or, in the largest sense, tatamae, the principal formality face pretense, versus honne, or reality -- actual practice -- the face without makeup -- the way we do things.
Now, before I lose myself in this conceptual jungle, let me move to the second part of my talk, on the practical implementation of freedom of information, because, in some ways, the practical ways offer us a way out of the conceptual jungle.
I do not know very much about the ways in which the Meiji Restoration conducted what the emperor called "open deliberations." But I do know how many other countries have come to the establishment of formal freedom of information laws and procedures. To put it bluntly, almost every freedom of information law in the world today, came about not because of any sudden conversion to enlightenment philosophy or rationality, but because of specific conditions of competition for political power. Competition between parliaments and administrations, competition between ruling and opposition parties, competition between present and prior regimes, competition between bribe-takers and muck-rakers. And here I will give examples from Sweden, the United States, Canada, Hungary, Germany, and South Africa.
The first freedom of information law in the world actually pre-dates, came before, both the French and the American Revolutions, so so much for all that philosophical history I just gave you.
Sweden, in 1766, passed a Freedom of the Press Act, which legalized the publication of government documents, and provided for public access to government documents. 1766. The reason was not Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The reason was real politik. Sweden enjoyed an extended period of parliamentary rule between about 1718 and 1772. And the new majority party in 1766 wanted to see the documents which the previous government had kept secret. Two hundred years later the United States passed its Freedom of Information Act for very similar reasons. Even though 1966, when the FOIA was passed, was the height of President Johnson's Great Society legislation, the Freedom of Information Act in the United States was really based on ten years of previous hearings in the Congress that began with pressure from Democratic legislators trying to open up the deliberations of the Republican government under President Eisenhower. The FOIA which we know today in the United States, with broad coverage and narrow exemptions and powerful court judicial judges review of government decisions to withhold information, this is an amended version of the 1966 Act which was passed by a Democratic Congress over a Republican veto by President Gerald Ford in 1974 in the wake of Watergate. And here we see the role of scandal, the very dramatic role, in catalyzing open government reforms. Ironically, the White House tapes and the other Watergate documents show that President Nixon was not only a pathological liar, but also a serious open-government reformer.
President Nixon ordered the massive declassification of literally millions of previously secret U.S. government documents, ranging back to World War II. He set up new limitations on the amount of government secrecy. He reduced the number of government officials who were allowed to stamp a document secret. And he criticized national security classification in very dramatic terms. Now, I won't give you the precise quote, but I think looking at the Watergate tapes we can see Nixon's real motivations in these secrecy reforms -- I think. He was trying to bring the bureaucracy under White House control. By reducing the secrecy in the bureaucracy, while also increasing White House secrecy. All we have to do is think of the China Diplomacy, or the notorious "Plumbers Group," whose job it was to stop up leaks within the government. Nixon was attempting to reduce the power of the permanent bureaucracy, and enhance his own power. This is a very interesting lesson. This was not idealism at work, this was real politik.
Another example: In Canada, scandals relating to police surveillance and to government regulation of industry, led to passage of the Canadian Freedom of Information Law, together with a significant privacy law, in 1983. A major component of the Canadian law tried to avoid the law suits, the litigation, that was so common in the U.S. system. While the Canadians did guarantee ultimate court review of government decisions over secrecy, over access and privacy, the Canadians also created an Information Commissioner, who investigates and makes recommendations on these decisions before anyone goes to court. Now, the Commissioners recommendations are not binding on the ministries, but they're quite powerful nonetheless, both because of the media exposure and by the Commissioner's direct reporting to the Parliament. In many ways, the Information Commissioner role resembles the Scandinavian ombudsman concept, which is also very important in Poland and Eastern Europe, or, in a much less formal comparison, perhaps, to the Japanese tradition of go-betweens, mediators between two opposing parties.
Now, the Canadian experience also raises, I think, a very important point on the relation of privacy to access. Often, usually, these are seen as competing values, which must be balanced to decide whether or not to open government records. I see these two values -- privacy and access -- instead as complimentary values, in that personal privacy cannot exist without openness in government, because a closed government is free to invade personal privacy without accountability. And likewise, true openness in government cannot exist without privacy protection, because a government which exposes everything it knows about its citizens also abuses its power.
In Hungary, in Eastern Europe, which passed its Freedom of Information Law in 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the end of the cold war, the relation of privacy and openness is the key controversy. The 1992 law in many ways was the revenge of the new regime against its Communist predecessors, opening their files and exposing them to accountability. And yet, many of the new rulers were also in these files, not necessarily as dissidents under the old regime, but as effective, non-Communist managers or leaders in those prior years. As a result, the 1992 Hungarian law focused primarily on data protection. Control of the files, not access. And, in my opinion, this law in Hungary has served mainly to strengthen the power of the Hungarian Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry over individuals in the name of privacy protection, without really guaranteeing greater openness.
In Germany, which has some of the most stringent privacy protection laws in the world, we see a counter-example to the Hungarian experience. The notorious Stassi files, of the former East German secret police, are now open by application to individuals seeking their own files, and to scholars seeking documentation for history. But privacy is protected by censoring the names and personal identifiers of individuals, on what amounts to a sliding scale of privacy. That is, the people with the most privacy protection are the victims of the surveillance or the harassment. While the police officers and the informants who performed the harassment received much less privacy protection, and the highest policy makers of all are completely exposed. In fact the archive of the former East German Communist Party --the SED -- is now the most open archive in the entire world today. One can find documents, including the transcripts of Eric Honnecker's talks -- transcripts, verbatim transcripts -- of his talks with foreign leaders. Brezhnev, Castro, others, available all the way up through 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, uncensored. This is a remarkable thing. And that privacy regime to me corresponds in many respects to the standards for libel in the United States, which is that higher rank, higher power, brings less protection and less privacy in terms of libel. A public figure must prove malicious disregard for the truth to win a libel case in the United States. To extend this argument, that's not to say that the President of the United States has no right of personal privacy, but simply that in his official policy-making capacity, privacy provides very little right to withhold official information.
Now, final example of a work in progress, again from a change in a regime. The interim Constitution, under which Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa, includes a specific provision guaranteeing freedom of information to all South Africans. In many ways this is the strongest guarantee in the world of the right to freedom of information. The U.S. Constitution, in contrast, contains the right only by inferences in several articles in the First Amendment. But yet, because South Africa lacks established administrative procedures and the judiciary is only beginning to be reformed, this Constitutional right is only an idea, not yet an actual practice. So, as you can see from this brief overview, the history of freedom of information in practice in the world is extremely varied and complex. I'm very interested to hear later in the program from experts here in Japan, scholars, members of the citizens' movement seeking a Freedom of Information Act, on the current state of such efforts. Judging only from what little I know of Japanese politics today, given the significant changes in government, public debate about reform of the bureaucracy, and so forth, the conditions may be ripe for a Freedom of Information Law.
But I will finish my talk by describing the experience of the National Security Archive as a tangible expression of freedom of information in action. We are only ten years old this year, but back in 1791, our mission was defined for us. A fellow named Jeremy Belknap, who founded America's first historical society in 1791 in Massachusetts, said this about archives, quote: "There is nothing like having a good repository, and keeping a good lookout, not waiting at home for things to fall into the lap, but prowling about like a wolf for the prey."
We have to prowl at the National Security Archive, because the documents we focus on -- contemporary national security and international relations documents -- inside the United States government, by definition are usually classified at least "Secret." And it takes a real effort to break them loose from the government, even including lawsuits, going to court. We could wait twenty-five to thirty years for these materials to come out, but we think that that delay hurts all of us as citizens of the world, as scholars, as journalists, as teachers, as policy analysts, all of these processes are weaker when based only on oral sources or secondary sources. And there's also the goal of government accountability, for which openness is the only insurance.
Let us remember the early 1980's, to give you the context of the founding of the Archive. Back then there was a renewed Cold War, there was a speedup in the U.S.-Soviet arms race. There was a sense of much greater danger in the world. In Washington, the Reagan Administration went into "fortress mode," pulling up the drawbridges. They reversed a trend from Eisenhower through Carter of attempting to reduce the amount of secrecy in the U.S. Government. During the 1960's there were 60,000 bureaucrats who could classify secrets. By the 1980's, that had dropped to 10,000, and yet the Reagan Administration increased it. President Reagan signed a new executive order which made secrets within the U.S. Government almost immortal, indefinite. President Carter had tried to put a "sunset," a time limit, on each secret -- ten years or fifteen years, so it would be automatically released.
The consequence of this expanded secrecy, combined with heightened issues of war and peace and nuclear danger, was that the major public policy debates in Washington and in the United States, and in the world, for the most part lacked primary source documentation on these contemporary issues. And in the absence of documentation, the debate took place in the press with anonymous sources. And certainly such sources have their role to play, but to the serious researchers they only frustrate ultimate knowledge. They become a moving target and can never really be pinned down.
So the National Security Archive was founded in 1985 to meet this need, to bring out into the public primary documentation in the sphere of national security issues. To their great credit, a group of American foreign policy journalists, led by Scott Armstrong of the Washington Post, Raymond Bonner of the New York Times, Fred Kaplan of the Boston Globe, and others, had a conversion, like Saul on the road to Damascus, from the ethics of journalism, in which one succeeds by scooping one's competitors, to the ethics of a librarian, in which one succeeds by providing information to all comers, without regard for their need. Each of these journalists had amassed thousands of pages of documents through the Freedom of Information Act, and instead of hoarding all this information in their basements, they decided to pool their documents in one central repository -- a non-governmental repository -- for others to use and benefit from the work that had already been done. Now, these Archive founders recruited some of the leading academics of U.S. foreign policy to join them, such as Professor Akira Iriye of Harvard, and many others who donated not only their documents, but often, what was more important, their guidance as to what subjects the Archive should address, because our limited resources meant that we had to pick and choose our topics, and how we should do so. These Archive founders also recruited me. I had been a journalist, I had been a Congressional aide, I had worked in the foundation world, and I became the first Director of Planning and Research at the Archive. I became the Deputy Director in 1986, and I became the Executive Director in 1992. We inherited not only documents that were donated, but we also inherited hundreds of pending Freedom of Information Act requests that were still in the pipeline, many of them years after the researchers had originally made those requests and then gone on to other books, other assignments, even to other worlds. We made it our goal to build on these collections, and to create a sort of living archive, because the originals of what we have, we hope, are still inside the government. But we created a super-archive, if you will, of the most important policy documents. We sought to identify the holes and the gaps in this documentation, to get the advice of former officials and scholars, to file systematic requests, and you'll hear much more about this process this afternoon from Dr. Robert Wampler, who directs our project on U.S.-Japan relationships.
Our annual budget is about a million dollars a year, mostly from foundation grants, private foundation grants, but about twenty percent of our budget comes from our publication royalties -- from our books and our microfiche, our CD-ROM publications. Dr. Wampler's experience is very typical of our projects. We have projects covering the whole world -- the Nuclear Arms Race, the Cold War, Eastern Europe, South Africa, the Phillipines, Central America, Cuba, etc. Solid research, good advice from outside scholars and former officials, targeted requests for documents, persistent follow-up, these pay off with fascinating declassified documents, many of which we have reprinted in the booklet which we handed out today, some of which are as recent as 1987 -- the meeting between Prime Minister Nakasone and President Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz. Extraordinary, very high-level documentation, essential for an understanding of the relationship between the United States and Japan.
We rarely file a lawsuit. We only have gone to court twenty times out of 14,000 requests under the Freedom of Information Act. But our court cases have provided spectacular results. For example, we obtained, through a court case, the letters between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obtained the diaries of Oliver North during the Iran-Contra Scandal -- a daily diary of White House activity. We obtained the after-action reports on the failed hostage rescue mission in 1980 in Iran by the U.S. government. We saved the electronic mail computer tapes from the White House itself of the 1980s and 1990s. These successful court cases give us a very important implied threat, which is very useful in the continuous negotiations which we have as outsiders with the bureaucracy which controls the secrets.
One surprise has been the cooperation we've received from former U.S. government officials, often for their own reasons: They are writing their own memoirs, they're seeking greater understanding of their own histories. In some cases they are seeking communication with the officials of other governments who sat on the other side of the table. We have helped organize conferences which put Cyrus Vance, the former Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor, together, and faced them with their Soviet counterparts, such as Dobrynin and Korniyenko. I have to say it was not clear at this conference where the greater hostility lay, between the Americans and the Soviets, or among the Americans. But perhaps the most extraordinary such event in our history was our conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought an American delegation, headed by Robert McNamara, and a Russian delegation, including Khrushchev's son, Sergei, to Havana, Cuba, for a three-day, face-to-face meeting with Fidel Castro.
We of the National Security Archive presented President Castro with the 14,000 page microfiche collection of all of the U.S. government documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis. In response, President Castro reached behind him to a box carried by an aide, pulled out files of his previously secret correspondence between himself and Khrushchev, and threw these letters onto the table in front of us, and said, "What is this declassification? Does it have something to do with the class struggle?" Everyone laughed. But when Fidel Castro declassifies his secret documents, then I think it's fair to say that transparency in government, and freedom of information concept, are really becoming the new world order. Thank you very much.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Thank you very much. Allow me to introduce the other speakers. Sitting next to Mr. Blanton is Mr. Clifford Sloan. He was, up until very recently, part of the staff of the White House. He was in charge of public information access. Later on, I'm sure, Mr. Sloan will be able to explain to us of the very recent Executive Orders as announced by President Clinton. And sitting next to him, I'm sure there is no need for me to introduce him, but Professor Chalmers Johnson, formerly from the University of California, and sitting next to him is the former Vice Minister of MITI, and now the Chairman of Dentsu Research Institute, Mr. Shinju Fukukawa. Seated next to him from Saitama University is Professor Iio, who has been the chief person preparing this conference. He will be here discussing on the major aspects of the situation. And now I ask Mr. Sloan to present his remarks.
MR. CLIFFORD SLOAN: -- Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here this morning, I appreciate the opportunity very much. Let me begin by saying that I believe that public access to government information is a very important issue. It raises fundamental questions about the relationship between the citizen and the government, and it has significant effects on the day-to-day operations of government. I have had considerable experience with issues of access to government information from various positions within the United States government. Because these experiences have helped to shape my views, it may be helpful to review them briefly.
As was mentioned, until recently it was my honor to serve in the White House as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States. Before assuming that position, I had served in other government posts in each branch of the United States government. I served in the Department of Justice, arguing on behalf of the United States government in cases in our highest court, the Supreme Court. I served as an assistant to a congressmen in the United States House of Representatives. I served as a law clerk on the Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals, and I served as Associate Counsel in the office of the Independent Counsel responsible for investigating and bringing prosecutions in the Iran-Contra affair. I am now a lawyer in private practice, and I want to emphasize that I am here in my own capacity, giving my own views. I am not here in any way as a government representative.
In each of the government positions that I have held, access to government information has emerged as an important issue. It has emerged as an important issue both with regard to the government information produced by the particular government office in which I served, and with regard to government information produced by other government offices. These experiences have convinced me that while there are certain balances which must be struck, a commitment to the principal of public access to government information is vitally important in a democratic society. These experiences have also convinced me that making access to government information a reality, rather than simply a lofty rhetorical aspiration, requires two kinds of actions. First, it requires a structure of rules and procedures which provide public access to government information, and second it requires leadership and commitment by government officials in respecting the importance of public access to government information.
In the United States, several different statutes and other sets of rules address the subject of public access to government information. For example, the Freedom of Information Act allows a member of the public to request and obtain government information subject to certain specific, defined exceptions. Similarly, the Privacy Act allows one to obtain government information about oneself, again, subject to certain exceptions. The Administrative Procedure Act requires that in many cases of major government action, before a proposed government rule becomes final, it must be published, members of the public must be given the opportunity to comment on the proposed rule, and the government must consider the comments before the rule becomes final. This process is known as the Notice and Comment Process, and it is very important in American government.
Today I would like to focus on two recent Executive Orders signed by President Clinton. These orders represent major new reforms in public access to government information. Both of these orders apply to classified information, and I would like to take a moment to discuss classified information.
Classified information is the information designated as "Secret," above and beyond other categories of government information. The information is supposed to have this special secret status, only because of its relationship to national security, or similar interests, which would be harmed by disclosure. Classified information is thus a particular and very important category of government information. The system of classified information has developed entirely by Presidential order, rather than by Congressional statute. In recent years there has been considerable discussion in the United States about whether far too much information is classified and kept from public view. An enormous volume of classified material has accumulated. Some estimates put the total amount at billions of pages, and a great deal of classified information goes back decades. In addition, the end of the Cold War has led to a re-evaluation of government secrets. The current structure for classified information grew up in the early years of the Cold War, and it is being re-evaluated in light of the end of the Cold War. At the same time, however, there is a clear concern for continuing to safeguard information that would compromise national security if disclosed.
President Clinton has addressed this issue with significant reforms. First, in November 1994, he signed an order automatically declassifying almost forty-four million pages of classified documents. Half from World War II and earlier, and half from the post-World War II era. The significance of this Executive Order was that it ordered the declassification of these entire categories of documents, without individual review of every line of every document. This sweeping action was extremely important. If every page of every document in these categories had to be reviewed line by line, it would proceed at a snail's pace. And these pages, of course, are only a fraction of the documents possibly subject to this laborious line-by-line declassification review. This first Executive Order was a significant advance, but it applied only to the particular documents, only to the forty-four million pages. The second most recent Executive Order is especially important, because it reformed the entire system of government information with regard to classification. The order allows for far greater disclosure, while still protecting secrets genuinely necessary for national security.
The philosophy underlying the order was best expressed by President Clinton when he signed the order. President Clinton stated, and I quote: "Today I have signed an Executive Order reforming the government's system of secrecy. The order will lift the veil on millions of existing documents, keep a great many future documents from ever being classified, and still maintain necessary controls over information that legitimately needs to be guarded in the interests of national security. In issuing this order, I am seeking to bring the system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information into line with our vision of American Democracy in the post-cold war world. This order strikes an appropriate balance: on the one hand it will sharply reduce the permitted level of secrecy within our government, making available to the American people and posterity most documents of permanent historical value that were maintained in secrecy until now. On the other hand, the order enables us to safeguard the information that we must hold in confidence to protect our nation and our citizens. This order also will reduce the sizable costs of secrecy, the tangible costs of needlessly guarding documents, and the intangible costs of depriving ourselves of the fullest possible flow of information." That is how President Clinton described the order.
The order takes many important concrete actions. First, with regard to existing records more than twenty-five years old, it requires that all records be declassified automatically, like those in the first Executive Order. This declassification must be accomplished in five years, unless appropriate government officials can show that particular information fits within one of nine specific exceptions, and significant progress must be made each year as these five years progress. The nine specific exceptions concern such factors as revelation of intelligence sources or methods, impairment of weapons systems, and other issues related to national security and national defense. With respect to all of the exceptions, they are tied to a perceived specific harm that would result from disclosure.
The significance of this action, of this new executive order, cannot be overstated. Again, all classified information will be automatically declassified and subject to public access if it is more than twenty-five years old, unless it is shown to be within one of the nine specific exceptions. In a very short time, this action will lead to release of volumes of important information which has been secret until now.
Second, the order takes many significant actions with regard to the designation to new classified information, to ensure that fewer documents will be unnecessarily classified. It requires that information may be classified only if the government official seeking to classify it is able to identify or describe the damage to national security that would result from disclosure, and only if the government official actually provides a precise justification for the classification. The order provides that if there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, the information shall not be classified. Doubts will be resolved against secrecy.
Like prior orders, the order specifically provides that information may not be classified to prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency or to conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error. The order strongly encourages officials who believe that a classification is improper, to challenge the classification under new government procedures. It protects those who do challenge classifications under these procedures, and it sets up specific procedures for challenging the classifications by appeals to a new government board. The order also provides sanctions for government employees who classify information which should not be classified. These provisions will help prevent the unnecessary designation of information as "Secret" in the first place. In addition, the order takes many significant actions with respect to new information that is classified, to ensure that secrets are not kept indefinitely and unnecessarily. Classification of new information may not last for more than ten years, unless the information is demonstrated to fit within one of the exemptions discussed previously. This simple concept, placing a duration on the time of secrets, strikes a blow at the very notion of permanent secrets. The order also requires at the time of classification, an attempt to establish a date or event for declassification that may be before the automatic ten-year limit, and it provides that information should be declassified any time there is no longer a need for classification. The order also specifically permits government officials to determine that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the need for continued secrecy. The order thus takes many significant actions, which go far in changing the entire culture of government secrecy.
As President Clinton's statement made clear, the order is a balance. In addition to the actions providing for far greater disclosure of government information, the order also continues to maintain stringent protections for safeguarding classified information, including sanctions against government employees who fail to observe government classification rules. The order leaves no doubt that rules about protecting classified information and government secrets will be strictly enforced. These are the rules set forth by the new executive order, and they fundamentally change the government system for dealing with government secrets. As I mentioned at the outset, making public access to government information a reality requires leadership and commitment as well as rules. Leadership and commitment matter in two different ways. First, leadership and commitment matter in implementing and administering the rules. President Clinton showed great leadership in formulating and issuing this executive order. His clear commitment to eliminating unnecessary government secrets sets an important standards for the government officials charged with implementing the rules on a daily basis. In addition, leadership and commitment matter in generating creativity and initiative that go beyond the rules.
Let me give you a few brief examples. In December 1993, Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary learned of new information regarding U.S. government experiments exposing members of the public to radiation in the 1950s. She released the information publicly, and announced an openness initiative to release all available information to the American people as soon as possible. President Clinton promptly issued an executive order appointing a high-level commission to investigate the problem and to issue a report on it. Similarly, Attorney General Janet Reno has issued guidance on the Freedom of Information Act, changing government policies to produce greater and prompter disclosures. Her guidance recognizes that government officials have discretion in making decisions about implementing the Freedom of Information Act. And it tries to channel that discretion in the favor of disclosure, where possible and where appropriate.
In other areas, both the White House and Congress have taken significant actions to allow greater electronic access by the public to government information. Indeed, the subject of electronic information will be a major issue in the years ahead, posing numerous questions, the outcome of which will have important consequences for public access to government information. Leadership and commitment will be essential in resolving these questions.
In conclusion, I want to stress that public access to government information has at least three important benefits. First, ensuring public access to government information is an important statement that in a democratic society the government belongs to the people. Second, ensuring public access to government information serves the goal of accountability. The actions of government officials are effected by knowing that their actions will be judged in the sunlight of disclosure, rather than hidden in the shadows of secrecy. And third, public access to government information serves the goal of knowledge and understanding. Free societies share the insight that informed debate of public issues contributes to the public good. Access to government information contributes greatly to a truly informed public debate. Thank you very much.
PROFESSOR JUN IIO: I thank you very much. And I think that the framework of this symposium is very clear. Whenever we have experts here from the United States and from Japan, we always talk about what's going on in the United States, and I think that in the United States the freedom of information is very much advanced, whereas in Japan I think that the freedom of information is very much lagging behind. I don't know what kind of presentations Mr. Fukukawa will be making, but anyway, the scholars and the university professors are requesting for more freedom of information in Japan, whereas the people on the government side will be making excuses, or something like that.
And so I think that this kind of a framework is in a sense very good. That is to say, in order to contribute to the further promotion of the freedom of information in Japan. But having said that, however, freedom of information is not just a matter of black and white. Well, it doesn't mean that if we actually disclose information just like in the United States, all the problems will be resolved. It's not that simple, and as Mr. Blanton has mentioned, as a matter of fact freedom of information has occurred in various countries. And in some countries, of course, some such systems have defects, whereas some others have good points and so on. But if we focus our attention on only whether freedom of information is to be allowed or not, probably our discussions will be very much limited. As a result, the freedom of information system may not be desirable enough. And so, in my talk I would like to focus my presentation on the following point: in Japan, what kind of elements are actually lacking in the Japanese discussion concerning the freedom of information?
First of all, let me talk a bit about the concept of freedom of information in Japan. I think that there are three problems related to the concept of freedom of information in Japan. The first problem is that the Japanese people's expectations of the Japanese government are not necessarily high enough. Well, usually the Japanese people are relatively satisfied with the current status of the Japanese government. To put it differently, the Japanese people are not necessarily strongly interested in the policy-making process of the Japanese government, and freedom of speech is not advancing in Japan, but it is true that the government actually possesses a variety of information, and some people might say that this should be rectified. But, on the other hand, there are some people who say that probably the government officials are doing a very good job because of such very confidential information. And so, the people might have a very good idea about what's going on in the government. And so this kind of specific interests are actually being shared amongst the Japanese people.
Of course, this is nothing to be criticized, and this is to be welcomed, but in the government what kind of policies are being formulated? In what way are policies being formulated? And if you have no interest in the policy-making process, probably the freedom of information system will be defective. For instance, most typically, what's most frequently published concerns the wrong-doings of government officials. And how much entertainment money has been paid, and has been used by the government officials, and so on. But if you stop at the point, then that's the end of the story. And of course if you say that probably the government officials shouldn't be spending too much entertainment expenses, then probably they will think about some methods not to leave any receipts, or something like that. And so I think it's very important to go into the details and depth of the freedom of information. And so this is the first point. That is to say, not necessarily the output of the process, but in fact the process, the policy-making process would have to be made more public to the people. So that's the first point.
And the second point is that with the changes of government, the information, Freedom of Information Act is being enacted, and in Japan also I think that there is some good examples in the local governments. The local governments are doing a better job, because the dynamics of freedom of information are working better. And I think that the change of the government would provide us with a very good opportunity for the furtherance of the freedom of information. But that's not actually happening in Japan, because, of course, individual people can ask for individual information, but that's not the end of it. That is to say, for the politics itself. It should be a very good option. For instance, Japan is actually adopting the parliamentary government system, and, in this regard, the general public should actually request the information from the government officials. And while at the same time the politicians would have to give them access to the government records, as well.
And so these two parties -- that is to say the general public and also the politicians -- would have to request more freedom of information. But the problem with Japanese society is that the Japanese politicians are not necessarily interested in the freedom of information, and also the general public would have to ask the politicians to further promote the freedom of information, but that is not what is happening in Japan. So that's another problem that I would like to identify.
And as to the third problem, that is, the freedom of information, earlier there was a talk about the declassification. And since we don't have any declassification system in Japan, it seems that all the information is considered to be classified. But as a matter of fact, if you take a look at the vast amount of information held by the governments, for instance the National Security Archive is actually dealing with the national security related classified information, but on the other hand there is information that shouldn't be classified. And so in pursuing the freedom of information, we need to have a large body of information concerning the various types of information that are being classified. So it could be that there is a large amount of information that needs to be [de]classified. The most simple example would be the entertainment costs being spent by the government officials, but probably the more grave type of information may be related with the national security, and so forth. And so there is a wide spectrum of various types of information in terms of the degree of classification. And so we need to identify all of these.
And so now I would like to focus my attention on the need for the release of policy documents. As I mentioned earlier, the government documents have a lot of types -- [one is] what has actually been done. That's one type of information, and another type of information depicts what kind of process has been experienced, and how the decision has been made and so on. There are actually two types of information. But as I mentioned earlier, why has this particular type of decision been made? As a matter of fact, there is a lack of interest in this regard. But if you think about the significance and the importance of the freedom of information, what's the meaning of freedom of information for democracy?
I would like to come back to this issue later on, but I think it's very important to have the information concerning the policy-making process. It's not just enough to get information concerning the output of such policies. And suppose the decision of the policy is undesirable and that we've got to go to the second best. In order for that to be possible, I think that it's very important to evaluate the policy-making process. And so I think that is very important to have policy documents released.
But I think that the situation is different in Japan from that in the United States. That is, the National Security Archive has distributed some documents. In the United States the written documents are very much detailed, and, in fact, such documents depict detailed policy-making process. Whereas, in Japan, I think that the Japanese policy-making process is relatively vague in two aspects. First of all, I think that it is probably due to the unique characteristic of the decision-making system in Japan. In the United States, whenever a decision is made, I think that the boss actually issues some kind of memo or something like that. So there is that kind of written document. Whereas, in Japan, be it the government or be it the corporate environment, I think that everybody gets together to come up with the consensus, and the process of obtaining consensus is not necessarily expressed in the form of the documents. And so it's just that vaguely a consensus is being reached in the Japanese environment. So, even if you ask for the documents to be released, but the Japanese government officials might say that, "Oh, there is no such document," or something like that. And as a matter of fact in Japan we have the ringi system, with all the fields of parties concerned, the person is concerned. But that kind of information is prepared, and that kind of document is prepared only after a decision is made. This kind of document does not depict the policy-making process and so what's lacking in the Japanese system is the decision-making process itself in the written form. And so it is very important to establish a document-control system, and document-preparation system. Probably in the Japanese government the policy-making system would have to be shifted to the written type of policy of decision-making. And so whenever there is somebody who is transferred somewhere else in the same organization, probably the kind of policy-making process would be invisible. I think that society is changing dramatically nowadays, and so the new policies are being introduced at a very rapid pace. And so I think the internal environment of the bureaucracy would have to be changed. That is to say, the policy-making process would have to be written down. And in a precise manner would have to be written down.
But, of course, some kind of documents should be there, for instance, in order to hold conferences. There should be some information materials and discussion materials of some sort, and also there should be a memoranda of some sort. But most of the documents that have been distributed to you are actually the memoranda of government officials in charge. In the United States, that kind of memoranda, or notes, or scribbles, are considered to be the official documents in the United States. That is because those are the documents prepared by the government officials who are paid by the tax money. And so they are considered to be official documents. Whereas in Japan, according to the bureaucratic practice, probably the government officials are thinking that that kind memos or memoranda are actually personal documents or private documents. And of course the space in the office is relatively limited in Japan, and so you cannot necessarily store all that kind of information forever. And so this kind of document is a personal document, so the Japanese government officials might say. And of course there are some officials who are very careful and who are very detailed about leaving documents,..., but if the person is transferred to somewhere else, there is no rule that that kind of information should be preserved.
And so in order to release that kind of documents concerning the policy-making process, first of all, there needs to be established a rule. And so even if [there is a] freedom of information act, unless there is a system to ensure the document control system, that kind of documents wouldn't be actually preserved. So what we actually need are the documents depicting the policy-making process. And so it's not enough to ask for the freedom of information. As a matter of fact, as a prerequisite for the freedom of information, we need to establish the document control system. The document control system would have to be established, and so I think that the freedom of information would have to be pursued and promoted, along with the establishment of the document control system. And, of course, there [is information] which needs to be classified. So, just as Mr. Sloan has introduced some examples, like the U.S. President has been very brave in issuing this executive order, but it could have some problems, so I think that we should distinguish the type of information that requires classification, and the information that does not need classification.
And before concluding my talk I would like to talk about the significance and importance of freedom of information. I have touched on this issue already. I think that the benefits of freedom of information are actually multi-faceted. For instance, the freedom of information for our scholars would have tremendous meaning. I think that many of the Japanese scholars are actually faced with limitations in terms of the accessibility to documents. Without necessary information, without sufficient documents, the Japanese scholars would have to pursue research, and also Japanese scholars and professors would have to teach, on [the basis of] limited knowledge. But this is not good, of course, not only for the researchers, but also for the government officials. I suppose, that is to say, the truth cannot be elucidated.
There is another aspect to that, as has been just pointed out. History is going to judge what you have done. I think this aspect is very important for democracy. In a democratic society, what kind of evaluation will be rendered in the years ahead? I think that's very important. In the long process of history, the activities of the Japanese government would have to be evaluated. In the long-time span, the activities of the Japanese government would have to be evaluated. To put it differently, without any access to information concerning what was done by the Japanese government in the past, without that kind of information, probably it's not possible to actually come up with better policy options. And, on the other hand, what about the benefits for the public officials? You might think that freedom of information may be something that is not welcomed by the public officials, but it's not necessarily the case all the time. I don't think that freedom of information is a one-sided gate, so to speak. It's not just a unilateral or one-way flow of information from the government officials. I think that by disclosing information, official information, the government officials can understand, and can grasp, information and feedback from the general public. That is to say, providing information from the government side, the government officials can also obtain information from the public. And so in trying to come up with better policy options, I think it's very good to actually secure the freedom of information from the standpoint of government officials as well.
And also for the general public -- what are the benefits for the general public of the freedom of information? Well, it may be good, of course, for the general public. Through the newspapers, of course, a lot of information is to be communicated to the general public, and the general public will be able to change. That is to say, earlier I talked about the Japanese people's tendency to ask for only the output of the process, but I think that the Japanese people will have to be changing in the future. That is to say, the Japanese people would have to be more interested in the policy-making process as well. And also this kind of freedom of information will be very beneficial for international exchanges as well, and today we're having the international symposium on the internationalization of Japan, and I think that due to the low level of transparency on the part of the Japanese policy-making, the Japanese government's activities are sort of mystified. I think that what the Japanese is doing is sort of mystified. But on the other hand, some foreign governments might say that the Japanese government can do anything. Well, in the recent trade negotiations between Japan and the United States, there is a lot of demand coming from the United States. But that's partly because the Americans are thinking that the Japanese government will be able to do anything. And, of course, for us insiders that's not the case.
But, unless the Japanese government actually provides official information, the weaknesses and the strength of Japanese government cannot be actually grasped by the foreign governments nor by the general public. By so doing, probably the misunderstanding might be accelerated. The freedom of information should be able to further reduce the misunderstanding between Japan and the foreign countries. By so doing we'll be able to contribute greatly to the internationalization of Japan. And so I have talked about many things, but it is true that freedom of information has a lot of benefits. And so these are the multi-faceted aspects of freedom of information, and those of us who are interested and are trying to promote the freedom of information in Japan will have to act accordingly. Thank you.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Thank you very much, Professor Iio. We will now have a discussion from the discussants.
Fortunately Mr. Shiina has just arrived from the House of Counselors. I know how busy he is, and we were afraid that Mr. Shiina won't be able to be with us, but he is here so I am very glad. Professor Johnson, please.
PROFESSOR CHALMERS JOHNSON: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here at this important meeting. My topic for brief discussion this morning is the CIA and Japanese politics. Let me introduce the organization I represent, the Japan Policy Research Institute. It is a non-profit research agency devoted to public education about Japanese-American relations. We have recently completed a special report called "The CIA and Japanese Politics." It will not be released until July ninth, because we are co-publishing it in the August issue of "This is Yomiuri." But I want to indicate what this is about.
In a letter to The New York Times dated March fourth of this year, the acting director of Central Intelligence, Admiral William O. Studemann wrote, and I quote, "We are aware of the importance of an accurate historical record." Nonetheless, he insisted that the CIA has an obligation to, quote, "keep faith," unquote, with foreigners who have, and I quote, "received legally authorized covert support from the United States," unquote.
It is important to state at the outset that an accurate historical record is also what interests the Japan Policy Research Institute. As we search into the history of American payoffs to the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, and dirty tricks against its political opponents, we do not wish to compromise in any way the national security of either the United States or Japan. Mr. Kodama Yoshio, 1911 to 1984, probably the CIA's chief asset in Japan, has been dead for more than a decade. And for most Japanese and Americans, the allied occupation, the "M-fund," the mobilization of Yakuza to protect President Eisenhower in 1960, the Lockheed case itself are all ancient history. Our present-day discussion could embarrass some deceased Americans, and some descendants of former prominent politicians in Japan. But it no longer has anything to do with national security.
Our interest is in the foreign manipulation of the Japanese political process during the allied occupation, and its evolution over the more than forty years since the occupation ended. This issue has not merely historical significance. As Jim Mann, who is the Washington correspondent of the Los Angeles Times a regular columnist, as Jim Mann recently put it, and I quote, "Did you ever want to know why the Japanese government behaves the way it does today? Why its politics seem so corrupt, why its political parties are so hopelessly weak? Why Japan never developed a workable two-party system? There are some U.S. government files that could help shed light on those particular questions," wrote Mr. Mann in the Los Angeles Times last March.
Similarly, Professor John Dower, a member of the board of advisors of JPRI, comments in the New York Times, and I quote, "We look at the LDP and say it's corrupt, and it's unfortunate to have a one-party democracy, but we have" -- meaning we, the United States -- "have played a role in creating that misshapen structure."
This is JPRI's interest in this subject. It is historical, but it is also directly connected with day-to-day policy making in Tokyo and Washington now and in the future. Like many Japanese intellectuals, we contend that the failure of Japan to develop a two-party system, comparable to that, for example, in Germany, and the country's persistent reliance on unelected officials for most governmental decisions, was influenced by the United States efforts during the cold war to ensure that Japan did not choose neutralism. These issues re-entered the news last autumn when the New York Times published its article entitled, "CIA Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in the Fifties and Sixties," by three journalists, Tim Weiner, Stephan Engleburg and James Sterngold. This report did not say anything that had not been suspected earlier, but it quoted some important participants, including Alfred C. Olner, Jr., the CIA's Operations Chief for East Asia, from 1955 to 1958; Roger Hilsman, the Head of Intelligence and Research at the State Department in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations; and U. Alexis Johnson, American Ambassador to Japan, from 1966 to 1969. Each acknowledged making or authorizing payoffs to the LDP from approximately 1955 to 1972.
In Tokyo, the Sankei Shimbun reported on October tenth, the day after the New York Times story, that Deputy Prime Minister Kono Yohei, whose father, Kono Ichiro, was one of Kodama's closest associates, had held an emergency meeting with Ambassador Mondale, which the Foreign Ministry later exclaimed was merely a long-scheduled diplomatic appointment. Both the Japanese and the Americans maintained that the Times story concerned old news that had become common knowledge. The real importance, it seems to us, that the Times article came in the middle of an ongoing struggle to get the Central Intelligence Agency to declassify information for the State Department's official histories of U.S. Foreign Policy. Again to quote Jim Mann, the Washington correspondent of the Los Angeles Times in his piece on this, "Right now, the State Department historians are preparing to publish the volume that will cover American policy toward Japan, Korea, and China, during the John F. Kennedy administration. They have found plenty of information about the CIA's operations in Japan, and want to include it in the official history. But the CIA has refused to declassify or allow publication of the files that show what it was doing in Japan in the late 1950s and 1960s. A group of academic historians advising the State Department has recommended that it publish blank pages for the sections dealing with Japan in those cold war years, rather than printing a sanitized version."
While we know a lot today about Kodama Yoshio and his operations, researchers would still like to see the U.S. government's files on him. Other files that would be of great interest are those concerned with the great murder, or suicide, and sabotage cases of 1949. The Shimoyama, Mitaka, and Matsukawa cases. The Japanese have sought out the KGB files on these subjects, and found them unrevealing, but they have long claimed that these incidents were provocations carried out by SCAP, by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, and were intended to justify the reverse course and its so-called Red Purge. Someday we need to know the truth of the matter.
Our message in this paper that we have done is straightforward. The cold war is over. Whatever the United States may have believed was necessary to prosecute the cold war, the cold war itself can no longer be used to justify ignorance about its costs and unintended consequences. The issue today is not whether Japan might veer toward socialism or neutralism, but why the government that evolved from its long period of dependence on the United States, is so corrupt, inept, and weak. At a minimum, these essays should inform unsuspecting scholars that uncritical analyses of democracy in Japan may one day be blind-sided by newly declassified information.
Let me conclude there, the reports that we then append are one, by the former Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Norbert Schlei, in the Kennedy administration, on the so-called "M-fund" that was created during the occupation to influence Japanese politics. Another is a very important piece that we believe will soon have the documentation released to substantiate it by Professor Michael Schaller on the American influence on the odyssy of Mr. Kishi Nobusuke from Sugamo Prison to the Prime Ministership.
The reason that I raise these things is simply to suggest the enormous importance of opening archives. That we increasingly appreciate in the United States, that unintended consequences of the American policy during the cold war was to sacrifice, to a certain extent, the political systems of both Japan and Italy. That in both countries the United States feared the strength of, on the one hand, the Japanese Socialist Party, on the other hand, the Italian Communist Party. Both had considerable legitimacy; both could have come to power. The Americans saw it, I believe, in terms of Cold War realities, as something we should try and avoid, and that we used clandestine means to do so. The result is, however, today, as we see in both Italy and Japan with the end of the cold war, rather considerable domestic political chaos, as the old system no longer meets its purpose. And my reason for raising this is simply to stress I strongly applaud the works of this conference. I think that open government is directly related to the achievement of democracy in both Japan and the United States. Thank you very much.
PROESSOR. IGARASHI: Thank you very much, Professor Johnson. May I now ask Mr. Shiina to speak.
MR. MOTOO SHIINA: Thank you for the kind introduction. Since we had the plannery session of the diet, I have been late, and I apologize for that. I have to apologize that I had to miss several presentations at the outset, so I'm rather unprepared. So I will be talking sort of off the cuff as the idea jumps into my head.
Now, there are two important significances to public access to government information. One is something to do with history. That is to say, the recent past history, as well as the more or distant past history. Historic significance, that is to say. In the diet session we are trying to debate on what to do with the resolution at the commemorative year of the fifty years celebration since the ending of the World War. We are not historians, we are not academics, but based upon very poorly collected information, we are trying to think back, to look back at the history and deliberate on that. This is something very strange and perhaps funny to the people outside.
But the final document, the one page paper document, the top priority will be how to maintain the present administration of government. That is the top priority for the people discussing this questoin. Therefore, the content is of insignificance, it seems.
Now, if there is some relevance to this question of public access to the government information, when we look back at the history in Japan, up until fifty years before, that is to say, or ever since after that I'm sure, as Chalmers Johnson is well-versed with that, sometimes people try to explain that we were cornered into it, we were forced into it. So that was the kind of chain reaction we have successively seen by the successive governments. But whenever we take major decisions -- that is to say, not just the domestic question but for international relations, we must think of alternatives. We need to think of the possibility of alternatives. There must have been some alternatives or possibilities. So in managing our government, we can avoid mistakes or errors by thinking of the different alternatives. So looking back at the history from the other perspectives, from other angles of viewpoint would be very important. But for the public, it has always been the case that government will show just the final conclusion, not the process of the debate. And this tendency is still continuing. But in order to bring about a breakthrough in this, the question of scope, or the question of technical aspects, the question of the timing, but I think we need to have more in-depth public access to the information. And without this, the past errors and mistakes would be repeated.
Professor Iio, mentioned earlier that this piece of information will be disclosed, or will be made public at some point in the future if you have that premise. Then the discussion to follow will be different, will be looked at from a very different perspective or point of view. This is something quite distinctive from doing whatever you can do, or that is to say, doing whatever you would like to do -- you want to do as you like without any responsibility. So in this vein as well, I think it is very significant and important to discuss the question of public access to government information.
Now, you mention chaos, that it is now a chaotic situation. The 1955 situation, that is to say, the long time monopoly of the LDP, meant that without any alternative, the godsend declaration or the soothsayer's or the prophet's statement is to be made, a kind of an oracle to be sent out from above. That was the kind of government we had until now. And if we try to avoid this trap in the past, we need to think of trying to bring about the breakthrough in this very complicated and difficult question, so that we will not have to backtrack into the chaotic situation in the past. That is to say, I'm sure you're well aware of many different problems we are faced with when we look at the deliberation within the Diet, when we ask on the floor the question of the government, "What are you going to do about it?" The answer from the government will be "This is a very important question, therefore an advisory council will be created under the Prime Minister, and we're asking dozens of experts and professors to deliberate on this. For instance, the Ministry of Health and Welfare have come up with an advisory council and cautious deliberation will be made, and in two years time a conclusion will be reached, so we will be cautiously watching the process of debate."
That is the only kind of response coming from the government for every successive administration. Which means they know nothing. And if that is clear, let us say if it is clear what they are doing, then it's fine, but what is being deliberated in the advisory council is never made public, is never disclosed, and at the very end something incomprehensive comes out as a recommendation or report. And a very beautifully bound up report is being referred to at the television interviews, by the Prime Minister -- that is to say, the chairman of the advisory council will be submitting this report to the Prime Minister and that is being aired in the television news, but then what is done with the report is that the report will be stored somewhere and forgotten.
People talk about the devolution of power, delegation of power to the local governments, and everybody agrees there is a consensus, but we need to establish a law to promote delegation of power to the local government. Since this is a very important issue you cannot do it on a piecemeal basis, you have to come up with a major vision and proceed with the delegation of power. So you will establish an advisory council and ask seven learned persons together and in three years -- no, I believe it is five years, they are supposed to deliberate for five years -- and this will, in the end, result in a law for delegation of power.
Now, when the law passes through the Diet, what will come after is for the approval in the Diet for the membership of the committee. All of a sudden, this comes up in the Diet. The background material, curriculum vitae, is provided, and this bill comes up to the plannery session all of a sudden, out of the blue. For instance, whether the judges of the Supreme Court are to be maintained or not, it is something like that. It comes so out of the blue. And everybody says, "Oh, I think it's okay, so let us pass this bill." But nobody knows what the advisory council is trying to do. What is the content of what is to be debated?
But perhaps we need one woman on the committee, and if we have one woman, and perhaps the members selected are well-known figures who are members of the other committees as well then it's okay, and that is the only deliberation we have at the plenary session. But we need to reform this. We need to change this, because the final product of the deliberation is just a piece of paper that is handed over to the Prime Minister and then forgotten. Then nothing comes out of it. We need to bring about a reform right from the beginning of the process. So at the time of the approval of the membership of the committee, we need to know the members what kind of messages and statements they are going to make at the committee, so we need to disclose what is being discussed inside the advisory council.
Well, people talk of reforms in many areas. Reform seems to be in fashion these days. But then, all of a sudden, the findings are made public and that's all. Because nobody can know of the process that led to the final recommendation. So I am thinking of ways to try to remedy this. Mr. Fukukawa has been a government official in the past, I do not know what he was doing while he was a government official, but it seems that these days he is very enlightened, so I am sure he would agree to what I am proposing. I have been rather jumping around on many issues, but I would like to end my speech here. Thank you.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: I thank you very much, Mr. Shina. Then we would like to move on to Mr. Fukukawa please.
MR. SHINJU FUKUKAWA: I thank you very much for the introduction. I am Fukukawa. I listened to the three speakers, and also to the two panelists. I think I've learned a great deal from all of you. I have listened to your presentations with great interest.
As a matter of fact, I think it's of great significance for the organizers and sponsors of this symposium to hold this symposium on the freedom of information, in two respects. First of all, the Japanese government is now very much interested in how to secure freedom of information. To be more specific, there is the freedom of information subcommittee established in the information committee, and next year the deliberations will be concluded, and so we are reviewing various cases in the United States and in other countries, and also various advisors and suggestions have been put forth in this subcommittee. And what kind of documents are to be declassified and also what kind of secrecy should be kept and protected and safeguarded - the national security related secrecy and corporate confidentiality and individual privacy and so on. Indeed, as a matter of fact these are the issues that we are currently deliberating upon. In order to ensure the transparency of the execution administration, and also in order to open the policy options, in order to make the policy options open to the public, I think that it is very timely that we are having this kind of discussion in the government. And so that's the first point.
And the second point is why I am saying this is very important is that in Japan it seems that there is lack of interest in anything, in whatever. But at the same time, [there is] the iron triangle, that is to say the administration, the government, and their politics [politicians?] and the general public. Unless that kind of a system is reviewed carefully, the transparency and the closeness and the lack of interest or apathy, I think that all of these would have to be broken down. And so for that purpose I think that the freedom of information discussion is very important as well. And as Mr. Shiina has just pointed out, it is true that these three entities, that is to say the politics [politicians?] and the administration or government, and the people, and amongst these three entities there is a lot of interplay and interaction, and that's the reason why people are requesting for the reform of the government and the reform of the administration and reform of the business management also. And as Professor Iio has mentioned, what was the policy-making process that has been adopted in the past? And what's the problem with the conventional policy-making process? A 1955 system that's called -- that is to say, during the administration of the LDP, what kind of process was followed to come up with policy options?
Just simply let me mention the following. Back in those days, since 1955, there is a trust relationship established between the politicians and administration, and in fact the political leaders were experienced administrators themselves. And so there is a very good relationship between LDP and administration. And based on the various expertise and knowledge about administration, policy formulation was conducted.
And you formulate a policy, first of all the government officials who come up with policy options listened from time to time to what the people would have to say. And the government officials would present the kind of policy options to the LDP, and also to the committee concerned. For instance, the tribal [zoku] parliamentarians, that's the word that we use for this. And, after that for the budgets the deliberations will be conducted with the Ministry of Finance and so on. And if that kind of suggestions and policy options are approved by the LDP, and of course in the meantime there is the council deliberation, and depending on the case probably in two out of three councils, the suggestions or recommendations made by LDP would be supported by these kind of councils.
And so it is the suggestions and recommendations submitted by the government will be supported. And, of course, there are some controversial issues related with rice prices and so forth, and also there were some problems and controversial issues related with the reforming university management. But, in most of the cases the councils would just endorse the suggestions of the LDP, and then the councils would sort of serve as a PR agent, and the results in the conclusion of such deliberations will be announced in the newspapers, and then the government officials would encourage the news media to advertise that kind of conclusion. And then, on the Diet floor, of course people are most interested in how quickly the budget will be passed, and how to increase their batting average, so to speak, in the Diet deliberations. And so various [namurashi], or the ground work is to be laid down, and so whatever there is the stalemate of the Diet deliberations, that would be very harmful to the ruling party.
And so the LDP, or the ruling party, is very much interested in how to break through any possible stalemates, and so whenever a difficult problem comes out, the response we get from the government would be something like, "Well, this is a very difficult issue, and so we would like to carefully watch how it develops."
And, like in the case of the budget also, everything will be agreed and concluded behind the scene, and so it is true, in actuality, that the policy-making process was relatively closed, was not made open to the public. And of course the conclusion of such deliberations will be introduced to the society, but information is controlled to a large extent in that process. And according to the limited information corporations and consumers would have to act accordingly, and, for instance, if you follow the rules and regulations adopted by the government, and then you can enjoy some kind of incentives or some kinds of benefit from the government. That is to say, during the course of the development stage, I think that this kind of system worked very well in the history of Japan.
And so government officials who were engaged in an administration, or government administration, were very much interested in their own policies, and also whenever a criticism comes out, comes into the society, of course the kind of criticism is not to be welcomed by the government officials. And so, as a result, there is a limitation on the information to be disclosed to the society, for the information that will be helpful to encourage the understanding, good understanding on the part of the public. Of course, that kind of information will be encouraged to be disclosed, but in the other case, of course, information is very much limited.
But as was mentioned earlier, for instance, in the case of the bid-rigging, the public bidding was not functioning well in a fair manner due to the pressures from some interest groups, and so on. And also, the economy is very much globalized, and also the demand is becoming more and more diverse, and so the situation, the social environment and economic environment has been changed, and so the [traditional?] and conventional system shouldn't be able to work. And so it is now high time that we review the relationship between the administration, the politics, and the general public. And in that context it is now high time that we review this issue of freedom of information.
So, what is expected of politics, what is expected of government? And what kind of private sector roles are to be fulfilled? These are the important questions to be addressed. I don't think that presently the political functions are working very well, and so I think it's very important to think about how to improve the political functions at the moment. But the policy packages, and also the policy programs, would have to be made clearer, and in a more clear manner such options and packages would have to be presented to the public, and people are talking about the lack of access, so to speak, of politics. But I think that the political access is actually lacking, and persuasion to the general public and also the actions. As a matter of fact, whether a certain party is capable of doing all of these, the political parties would be evaluated. I think that the political functions concern the very basic administration of the state, but of course if you take a look at the current situation, the actual situation, it's very important to see the politics further revitalized through the course of administrative reform. In the past, much emphasis was placed upon what kind of output comes out of the policy-making process. But I think that the administration should play a role of following the basic rules and basic policies adopted by the politics and also the government should execute budgets and laws in a fair and official manner. And also, based on the observations obtained through the execution of administration, necessary information and necessary policy options would have to be provided to the political functions and also to the general public. If we think that it is now high time for the governments to be changed it is now high time for the administration to be changed, and then we would have to think about this. And what about the situation and what about the government in the U.K., and a what about the situation in Germany? We need to review those foreign cases. The general public would actually be given the policy options, and then based on the freedom of choice and freedom of options the administration would have to fulfill its functions, and the politicians would have to fulfill their functions.
And so, over the next one year, or one year and a half, we would like to deliberate upon how best for these three functions to fulfill their own functions. It is now high time that we establish a new framework conducive to that kind of environment. And I think that there are four expectations that I place out of the movement toward furtherance of freedom of information. In principal, in the parliamentary government system, the government should be responsible for the Diet, but in the case of the freedom of information, as has been pointed out, the execution of the administration should ensure impartiality, neutrality, efficiency and transparency of the execution of highly complicated administration. Secondly, the second expectation that I place is the policy formulation. What's most important at this point in time is to ensure competition in terms of the policy suggestions and policy options. And there is a possibility of change of governments. And based on that assumption, of course, we'll be able to regain the vitality of politics. Keidanren, Nikkeiren, or Keizai Doyukai, or other business circles of Japan, what kind of directions will these organizations take? I'm very much interested in that issue, but be it such business communities or various think tanks --I think that Kasumigaseki is the largest think tank in Japan - and so I think it's very important for the Japanese government and for the business circles to compete in terms of their policy suggestions, so that they can come up with the best possible policy options.
And so the administration and bureaucratic structure would have to be something flexible, and would have to be provided with more flexibility. And so I think that inter-agency competition should be further promoted in this regard.
There are some people from academia and there are some academicians who wish to become the members of the government councils. And, of course, there are those who don't like to do that. But anyway, good quality information is made available in the course of the deliberations at such councils. And so some university professors are interested in becoming the members of the councils. And so, based on that kind of information, of course, it would be useful for university teachers to pursue their own researches.
But if that is the case, probably the policy options to be adopted in the future will be very much one-sided. And so it is very important to ensure competition amongst various entities in terms of their policy suggestions. The competition could be between the Kasumigaseki and the business circles, and it could be between somebody else.
And the third expectation concerns our relationship with the rest of the world. In Japan -- excuse me -- overseas, the people are saying that Japan is, after all, different. There is the revisionist movement overseas, but this is a very difficult problem to be addressed in the future. That is to say, the evaluation of the future of Japan is being revised. And as Professor Iio has mentioned, I think that this is another difficult problem that needs to be addressed. I think we need to properly cope with this problem. The world is globalized to a great extent, and what kind of discussions will be held at the upcoming summit meeting is of great interest to me.
But anyway, the international economic operation, the integration, the coordination of policies amongst the major players, would be the only way that is possible for us. In the future, and in the years ahead, the structural change would be necessary, and also restructuring will be necessary, and also how to cope with the issue of unemployment. That's another important issue. And so how to coordinate various policies of each of the countries. And if you think about this, the American experiences, the German experiences, and the Japanese experiences would have to be shared in the form of the exchanges of information and views, and also between and amongst the various world-wide think tanks, it's very important to come up with the best possible coordinating policies. WTO should be made full use of in this regard. So under the borderless world economy, it's very important to pursue and promote freedom of information, especially for the global environment, and also the population related issues, and AIDS and so on. So all of these issues would have to be discussed based on the intellectual network which is widespread world-wide. And so in this respect, in this context also I think that freedom of information should be further promoted.
And fourthly, as Mr. Blanton has pointed out, electronic information is going to have a more important role to play in the future. I think that for the world economy, and for the world politics, the electronic information will have a very important role to play in the future. In this respect, the government that possesses a large amount of information would take initiative in formulating a government information system. And also the government should take initiative in disclosing their information. And I think that that would eventually contribute to GII[?] network. And at the same time, on a global basis, we will be able to further deepen the mutual understanding in the world.
And so these are the four points and four benefits that would be conceivable, and of course in pursuing the freedom of information, what to do with the privacy and also the corporate confidentiality, and what to do about the secrecy related with the national security, and diplomacy and so on. And, as Mr. Sloan has pointed out, these are very important issues to be addressed, and these require a long-time discussion, but I think that, as I mentioned earlier, in view of the roles to be played by the government administration, I think that the freedom of information should be further promoted, and in that process there might be some tensions experienced amongst the general public, the politics, and the government administration. But it is very important to secure that the government should be confidently in charge of administration, and new policy suggestions would have to be formulated. And so, to that end, I think that the freedom of information should serve that purpose. Thank you.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Thank you very much, Mr. Fukukawa. We have received reports from five speakers, but we have not yet started to have a panel discussion amongst the panelists. So we have received five reports and presentations, and if I may summarize, that would be as follows. And afterwards perhaps amongst the panelists we can have a discussion, then to be followed possibly by a discussion with the audience and the floor.
Well, five people have each spoken. As I have listened to them, the order might have not been organized, but the message was very strong. Mr. Blanton talked about the history of the information disclosure in the United States, and what has been the tangible case, particularly at the NSA. And Mr. Sloan followed by saying that under the Clinton administration, the declassification of information is evermore progressing, and to enable that, many fresh and sweeping measures have been taken. And Professor Johnson spoke about the many actions done by CIA in Japan, that after the war, in the process of democratization of Japan, many of the recommendations have come from the United States, but at the same time there might have been some manipulations on the part of the US, and light needs to be shed on this.
And Japanese speakers have come up with the appropriate response to the point made by the American speakers. Mr. Shina referred to history as well as how the Japanese politics should be currently, and he noted the importance of the disclosure of the information and making the information open.
Further, Mr. Fukukawa had mentioned that in the context of the modern-day Japanese politics, and the international situation, the policy option needs to be offered to the Japanese public, in a wider manner, and to invite competition so that the democracy can be re-activated. And also, international coordination is expected in the world, and in that context the need for information disclosure is becoming evermore greater, and government is trying to tackle the declassification of the information issue.
Professor Iio mentioned how the Japanese public are responding to this situation, and in order to institutionalize this information disclosure process, maybe much more effort needs to be done on how to put on record some of the information. And I believe Professor Iio was adept in coming up with a well-organized presentation of the points.
Having listened to your fellow panelists speak, perhaps some of the points were those that you have come to know for the very first time this time, or had a different understanding from yours. So perhaps I could invite the speakers up on the floor to have a talk amongst each other. Anyone who would like to talk to your fellow panelists up on the stage?
MR. BLANTON[?]: I have a question for Shina-son about the advisory council process. Within the United States system of freedom of information, one of the most difficult issues is the degree to which openness should apply to deliberations. The theory of why it should be closed is that if deliberations are open, the advice given is not as honest or as straightforward. And therefore, deliberations often in the American system are closed until the point of the decision. But then after the decision is taken, the deliberations are opened in order to show the basis of this. How does this kind of discussion apply in the case that you raised of the advisory councils and committees, whose deliberations are closed forever, it seems? Is there a balance between the openness and the honesty of the deliberations? Could you comment on that?
MR. SHIINA: Yes, to strike a balance is indeed very important as you say. But the problem with Japan is much more something primitive. Let's say everything is behind the curtains, behind the closed doors, so this is the problem we have in Japan. For instance, when we have ten members of the committee, at the advisory council, who are selected. That is to say, each different government ministry, they have come up with nominations of recommendations, so they have their own reasons to do for selection.
For instance, in Japan we talk of "letting off the steam," so to speak. We have two members for letting off the steam, so to speak, on-board and these five will be the leaders of the discussion, for instance. Those are the kind of reasoning behind the selection of the members, but that is not recorded. Everything goes on without being recorded or documented.
So we should start with that particular point of selection of the members, because even there the intention is clear. I believe in the United States I believe everything is made public. But in Japan everything is closed. We do not know of how they are being selected, for instance. Now, if we open up one hundred percent the discussion of the deliberation, of course, depending on the matter there may be some problems. But for us the problem is by closing the doors, by having the deliberation in camera. Of course, things will differ a degree from ministry to ministry, but even the direction of the discussion will be steered by the officials. And when the paper is presented, such as the item of agenda, for instance, the talking point, for instance, then it will sort of deliberately point to the direction they would like to lead, and the discussion will go along that. Or, perhaps, certain views of the members will be withdrawn immediately. So I think to make everything open would be more beneficial in the case of Japan. That was what I wanted to point out.
Another thing I also found interesting that you talked about earlier was electronic information. I believe electronic information, electronically processed information is very important for Japan. Because, in Japan, people don't like to record in documents, or record something in writing. I, myself, for six years have served as the chairman for one policy group, and I was immersed, if I may say so -- as Mr. Fukukawa has suggested, in that process. Everything is whispered. That is to say, in just five lines, for the top people -- your boss -- you whisper in their ears. And then everything will be decided there. Not preparing papers or documents - whispering is very important.
For instance, there are certain people who give major speeches at the sub-committees, for instance, but this is just for letting off steam purpose. They make grand theatrics, so to speak. For their speeches to be sort of advertised to the public, but for everything important, everything is whispered. But in order to do away with that, I believe you need computerization to write down something into computers. That, I think, is the custom and practice we need in Japan.
There are people who like the screens more. And nowadays the younger generation especially do not like to read the printed letters. But as a sort of custom and practice, to write down something in the form of notes or memos is the kind of practice that we need, because whispers don't remain long. Because everybody would not be able to know why a certain person would have changed one hundred and eighty degrees overnight their position. This is because of whispering, so we need to do away with such strange practices.
I may have said something inconsequential, but thank you.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Professor Johnson, please.
PROFESSOR JOHNSON: Mr. Shiina said that everything was open in the United States and closed in Japan. I'd like to quickly say that's not true. There's a lot of things in the United States that are quite severely closed. It seems to me that recent incidents have drawn attention to how utterly central this issue is to the functioning of democracy. Among the biggest incidents in American politics right now are, for example, the revelations by the former Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara, during the Vietnam War, that he was wrong, he had misled the public, leading to a potentially revolutionary situation in the United States [in the 1960s]. And that this is a really intense debate.
It seems to me, similarly, the revolution referred to by my colleagues of the misuse of atomic testing in the 1950s, and the indifference of the government to the health of American citizens -- also, as many of you know here from the Fukuryu Maru [Lucky Dragon] case, [to the health of] some Japanese citizens. Many issues concerned with the evaluation of the USSR, and our growing belief that the Cold War was prolonged much much later than it probably needed to have been because of domestic interest in the military industrial complex.
All I would really like to add here, it seemed to me one major point of difference between Japan and the United States is that freedom of information acts are very important, but I would still want to go further and say that in terms of comparative politics, the enormous importance of the free press, - above all, the functions of the free press are to expose the pretensions and potential illegalities of the state. And it does seem to me that whereas our press in America can quite easily be suborned by political power, and often is, in Japan we have a real problem in the issue of the press clubs, and of the seeming control of the press by the people they're supposed to report on.
I'm thinking simply of a case well known to me. The bureau chief here of the Los Angeles Times commented on the case in which the U.S. ambassador, Mr. Reischauer, was stabbed in Tokyo, and he couldn't obtain admission to the press conference where this was being discussed, because he wasn't a member of the press club. Now, we know that in Japan there are ways around this. That's the whole function of shookai zasshi [?], and magazines, and things of this sort. But I think that this is an area of -- that is, we need continued attention to allow the press to play its function of informing the public as reasonably as it can about what its government is doing, and allow it to make up its own mind as to whether it is pleased with those.
My reason for raising earlier the CIA is that whatever one may think of American policy toward Japan during the Cold War, assuredly it was not a democratic policy. The American public did not know anything about it. It was hidden from us, and it's only today slowly being revealed, both in the case of Italy and of Japan.
So I think that one of the things I'd like to hear from Professor Iio, for example, is what do you think about the role of the press in Japan, as an agency for holding the government responsible?
MR. SHIINA: I would like to make one correction. I'm not thinking that everything is open in the United States, but the option is there, to make it public or not. The option is there. That is what I wanted to emphasize. Because the problem with Japan is you would like to open up, but there is nothing to be opened up. No memos, nothing in writing. That is the problem with Japan. That is the big difference between Japan and the U.S. I believe that is the problem for Japan. Mr. Iio, please.
PROFESSOR JUN IIO: I think this is a very important issue, that is to say the press issue, and so it may be rather difficult to respond for my side. But I would like to talk about three or two points.
From a standpoint of the freedom of information, by controlling the press, that is to say that even if the information is provided to the press, that information is not communicated to the general public. That is to say, the press is the friend of the government officials. But on the other hand as I have mentioned, and also as Mr. Shina mentioned, it is true that the Japanese people do not prepare documents in their policy-making process. And so probably the information and the documents submitted to the press might be o f some reference. It might be of some help. But judging from the mainstay of the discussion on the press, the press club, I think that this stands in the way of the freedom of information, that's for sure, and so along the movement toward the freedom of information, the press club system in Japan would have to be rectified. But what's the most important problem behind all of this is that in Japan the parliamentary government system is employed, and as was mentioned earlier, first of all, the government is accountable to the politicians first of all, in the first place. And also the government is responsible for the general public through politicians. But as was pointed out by Mr. Shina, the problem with the press club is that for the politicians the information is not disclosed, even. That is to say, the press can be controlled because there is no binding power, and so I think it's very important for politicians to pursue information. And I think that politicians are eligible to request information, of course, and so even if press club is controlled to a certain extent, the information available in the part of the Diet might be different, and also every entity should have the right to request freedom of information, be it politicians or be it press.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Sloan, please.
MR. SLOAN: I just wanted to make a point that these issues about the rules for access to government information always involve difficult questions of drawing lines. Even if you agree on the principle, how the balance should be struck is a very difficult process, and many different factors and different opinions enter into the process. When I was describing the executive orders before, especially the second broader executive order, it was the result of a long process with great discussion about where lines should be drawn. It ends up as an executive order issued by the President, but it was effected not only by a debate within the government, but by a public debate about those issues, including the National Security Archive, and I think that an organization like the National Security Archive is very important and very helpful in focusing attention on these issues. And also including a great deal of attention by the press.
And Congress frequently enters into these discussions, not only through statutes, but also through the process of hearings, through the process of particular interests of individual congressmen and senators. And there are not magic answers. The Executive Order that was issued, which goes very far in the direction of disclosure was welcomed by many in the press, but many in the press also thought that it did not go far enough. There were others in the press and other commentators who would have drawn the line differently and maybe not gone as far as it did. So there are no magic nswers with these. It's always a question of a difficult process of drawing lines and reaching judgments.
But one point in talking about the role of Congress and the secrecy of the advisory council, one question that I wanted to raise, and maybe this relates to the parliamentary system that Professor Iio was just raising, is whether in the Diet there is an opportunity to have government officials come forward and to ask them questions about the types of issues that you are raising, because in the American system the opportunity for Congressional committees to hold hearings and ask government officials for their positions and obtain information through the Congressional process, is a very important instrument of access to public information, and I'm wondering whether that is possible in the diet, as well.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Professor Iio, please.
PROFESSOR IIO: Well, in the case of the government, in each of the committees, what we call the government committee members are there -- that is to say, the ministers, and also the Director General of the bureaus, and so forth, and all of these people are the information sources for various information. But that's in the frame of the committee deliberations, not in the form of the public hearing. And, of course, anybody can attend that kind of deliberations.
And so, in this respect it is not called the public hearing like the one in the United States, but it is open to gallery, and so, in this forum, the Diet-men can receive information from the government officials. But is it really effective enough? And as to the details of the contents of the information derived in this approach, I'm not sure whether that's enough or not.
And in the case of the delicate and subtle problems, and subtle issues, probably the government officials would like to avoid the kind of subtle problems and delicate problems in that kind of forum. So I'm not sure to what extent this kind of forum would be effective for the freedom of information. I think it all depends on the contents of the questions, of the questioner, how adequate the question is or not.
And also the government officials are providing replies, but on the other hand, the government officials are not allowed to ask questions to the general public. And so this is a one-way communication, and so in this respect probably the quality of the deliberation is not sufficient and is not satisfactory. And so in the course of the committee deliberations, of course it is possible to get information from government officials, but of course it all depends on the adequacy and sufficiency of the questions to be raised. And also another problem that I would like to mention is that it is just one-way communication, not two ways.
MR. SHIINA[?]: If I may add one word, yes, those are the two problems as mentioned by Mr. Fukukawa. Those problems do exist.
Now, to ask questions of the government, on the previous day, the list of questions are asked to be submitted, are required to be submitted. This is a procedure we have to go through. And if the questions are embarrassing for the officials, they ask us to withdraw such questions. There are very strict censure, if I may say so, of the government officials. And the politicians tend to withdraw, if they are asked to do so, their questions. So to formulate the questions, the ability on the part of the politicians are rather poor, if I may say so. So that is one brake put on the politicians, and the other is that there will be stop coming from the government officials. So the question then becomes blurred, so the truth does not come out of the questioning on the floor.
I would like to add one more point, that is, why is it so? It may sound very paradoxical, but in the Japanese Diet, governmental officials and politicians -- the meaning and significance of the responses coming from the government officials is that disclosure of information and -- well, as a matter of fact it is not for the sake of disclosure of information, it is not for the better understanding of the Diet men, but in fact the consistency in terms of the government position, that is to say, the government officials think that they shouldn't make mistakes. And so if you try to avoid any mistake, the best way is to express your opinions in a very vague way. And also, as in cases they might say that it's not decided yet, it's not finalized yet, and so I cannot give you any specific answers, something like that.
I think that the problem with the Japanese freedom of information in this regard is that even if it's in the interim process of deliberations, the government officials should disclose that kind of interim information. But according to the long-standing Japanese practices, that is not the case in Japan.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Okay, Mr. Fukukawa.
MR. FUKUKAWA: I would like to ask this question to Mr. Sloan. While in the deliberations, be it committee or advisory council, who says what? There are some cases where that kind of information would be better made public, but also there are those cases where if the deliberations are made public, then the people would not make honest statements. And in Japan, also, suppose a president of a shop or supermarket says that the liberalization of rice [imports] would not be a good idea. And then the Japanese people might go into boycott. And if the name of the president is actually disclosed in that information, then he wouldn't say that in the committee deliberation.
And there is another issue related with the large retail store law. Whether that is to be approved or not, and for the deliberations on this issue, who actually said yes for this law, and who actually said no to this law, and if the kind of information is disclosed to the public, and then probably there will be much pressure exerted upon the committee members outside of the floor of the deliberations. And in order to secure impartial and fair deliberations, probably in some cases it may not be a good idea to disclose the information as to who said what, and so on.
So in this respect, how to make rules and so on, there is a reference to that effect, and what kind of information is to be published, and what kind of information should be kept confidential? And concerning this issue I would like you to make a comment on the American situation based on your experiences, please.
MR. SLOAN: Certainly. I'd like to make a couple of comments about that. There are some clear rules about that in many instances right now, and there is also an active debate about whether additional rules are necessary.
In terms of the rules that come to mind that are in effect now -- as I mentioned in my talk, the notice and comment procedure requires that when the government is going to take an action, issue a rule in many instances, it has to publish the proposed rule, and then there is an opportunity for public comment, and then the government agency has an obligation to respond to those comments and to address them, and to say why it either finds them persuasive or not, and if somebody doesn't like the rule, they can challenge it in court, and one of the things that the court will review is whether the government agency was reasonable in the extent to which it took into account those factors. The court will defer to the agency to some extent, but it will look at that.
And in that system of public comment, the identity of the commentor is fully public. It's on the record, it's part of the administrative record. And trade associations regularly issue extensive comments, individual corporations regularly issue extensive comments, labor unions, public interest groups, it's very very common, and in fact it's expected that if a rule is going to effect an industry or a corporation, it will, as part of the notice and comment process, put in public comments and the government agency has to take those into account. So in that sense it's part of the existing system.
Now that's the formal process, and one area where there's currently a debate is whether additional laws are necessary for disclosure on lobbying with the Executive Branch. Disclosure on individual companies, or trade associations, or any other interest, hiring people to try to informally talk to people in the government and achieve a change in policy that way. And there is lobbying reform legislation, which has been in Congress, and which has been stalled. President Clinton has supported it, it's an active issue of political controversy, whether and when it is going to be passed. So in that sense it's a very live issue, whether additional rules are necessary.
PROFESSOR IGARASHI: Thank you very much. Anyone else? Well, we originally intended to receive questions from the floor, but because of my inadept chairmanship we have come to the time to close this session. But we do have ample time during this afternoon today, so after the afternoon presentations are over, I believe we can take some time for discussions with the floor. During that time you will be welcome to refer to the points which were referred to this morning, if you like, and ask questions.
We would like to close the morning session at this time, but lastly I would like to thank the panelists by giving them a warm round of applause. Thank you.
MODERATOR: We would like to start the afternoon session. May I ask Professor Iokibe to chair, please.
PROFESSOR IOKIBE: Thank you for the kind introduction. During the morning session we had a very active and lively discussion. Following the morning session we will continue to talk on the public access to government information. The theme for the afternoon session is the Obstacles to Reform and Proposed Agenda for Change. To have more in-depth discussion on the problems, and how we should put forward the vision for the future, this is what we need to discuss this afternoon.
I, myself, on the question of public access to government information, as an academician, I am benefitting from access to government information, especially when I went to the United States, where the public access to information is fairly advanced. Up until then, I had to interview the survivors of historic importance, and to receive the relevant information from them, but when for the first time I went to the National Archive in Washington, I was indeed amazed and surprised to find that there was absolutely no discrimination. Whoever you were, you were able to have access to such an enormous amount of information. And I was amazed by it, and I was very delighted to see this. And I have benefited much as an academician and scholar. And we have minutes at the [academic?] societies, and at a meeting you tried to first of all introduce the past minutes, and then give the conclusions of what was decided in the past. Now the persons who have been in charge of the particular debate and problem, the minutes start with memos and notes, and it's been typed up and been changed into the formal documents, you can really look into the whole process. Starting with the private notes, up until the formal minutes and conclusions and documents.
So ever since then I've frequently visited the United States to retrieve the necessary information and documents in the United States. And my friend always tell me, "It's good for you to come over here, and it's nice to see you again, but why can't you find the relevant material in Japan?" was always the question asked me by my American friends. It is not easy for us to try to make improvements in the process in Japan, but even though it is a very slow pace, we have been able to put one step forward towards expanded public access to government information. So in that regard I believe that it is indeed significant and opportune that we are able to have this conference at this time. I very much hope that as we go towards the end of the public access, and expanded public access to government information that would, I hope, be conducive to Japanese society.
Without further ado, allow me to introduce the three speakers and three discussants who are up on the stage. From your right, on the right hand most side is Dr. Wampler. He is from the National Security Archive in Washington. This is a private sector organization by which the government information is released and opened to the public. The National Security Archive is in charge of that.
Seated next to him is Professor Melvyn Leffler, who teaches the history of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia. The history of foreign affairs during the Truman era, as well as national security policy and so forth is his specialty.
Seated next to him is Professor Iriye from Harvard University. Not only bilateral questions of U.S. and Japan, but other countries as well, and not only the power structure but cultural aspects are also encompassed in his study. So he is studying a broad range in areas, and he is a leader in the study of Japanese foreign affairs.
And the fourth person seated up on the stage is Mr. Tazuaki Tanaka, the Director General of the Management Coordination Agency. He is trying to think of ways how to proceed with more public access to government information. He is the Executive Director of the Administrative Reform Committee, so he is at the front line of this effort.
And Mr. Koichi Yotsuya is seated on this side of the table, the person seated third from the end. He is the Manager for Declassification Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This Declassification Section, if I may dare to say so, is about the only organization amongst all the Japanese government organizations who is properly opening up information to the public. So he is in charge of that section.
An seated next to him is Professor Takashi Mikuriya of Tokyo Metropolitan University, of the Law School. Japanese political history is his specialty, and he is one of the opinion leaders in the academic society, as well as in the many journals. He is my colleague, if I may say so. On the questions related to both the administration as well as the legislation of politics, he is well versed in those matters.
And seated to the furthermost is Mr. Hiroshi Miyake. He is a lawyer. As a practicing lawyer he is very active in the question of the public access, especially on medical matters. He specializes in the matters of medical aspects on the public access to public information.
These are the seven people up on the stage that we will have for the panel discussion. ... May I now first of all call upon Dr. Wampler. How in the United States the public access to government information is being established and implemented, and how it is being utilized. Dr. Wampler, please.
DR. ROBERT WAMPLER: Today what I would like to discuss is to describe briefly the organization the National Security Archive's Special Documentation Project on U.S.-Japanese relations since 1960. I hope that in the course of these remarks I will be able to provide you with a clear understanding of the manner in which a project such as this makes use of the archival and declassification resources available in the United States for researching the history of American foreign policy.
This project has its roots in a desire to provide a more comprehensive documentary database for scholars, journalists, and other researchers who wish to study the history of official U.S. policies toward and relations with Japan over the past three-and-a-half decades. The 1980s saw growing public and scholarly interest in U.S.-Japanese relations, marked as these years were by the re-invigoration of the security relationship under Reagan and Nakasone, as well as by deepening trade tensions. These years witnessed the breakdown in the traditional seperation of security and economic issues in U.S. policy making and political debate, as seen in the FSX dispute and other high-technology issues such as semi-conductors. In the United States, concerns about the balance of responsibilities and the security relationship, worries over the future of American international competitiveness in high-technology fields, the festering disagreements over the persistant U.S. trade deficit with Japan, all worked to drive U.S.-Japanese relations to the forefront of public debate.
Accusations that the U.S. government was, in effect, assisting a key economic competitor in the name of sustaining a security alliance whose rationale was put in doubt by end of the Cold War, indicated the strains produced by these issues, all of which served to heighten public interest in this key, bilateral relationship. A body of scholarly analysis emerged, christened "revisionist" by some, which argued on the basis of close study of the organizational, bureaucratic, historical and cultural workings of the Japanese state that the U.S. government and American academics have long misunderstood the essential nature and structures of politics and economics in Japan, to the detriment of clear policy making in the United States.
Guided by the belief that scholarly analysis and public debate can only be enriched by greater access to official records which document the course of U.S. policy making regarding Japan, the National Security Archive in 1993 began its U.S.-Japan Special Documentation Project. It is designed to fill a critical gap in the empirical database for those interested in studying the history of the relationship in order to better understand its evolution over time, the roots of its continued existence, and the nature of the persistent misunderstandings and disagreements which grew to such prominence over the past fifteen years.
By necessity, the focus is on U.S. records, and thus on the making of U.S. policy toward Japan. This is admittedly only one-half of the story, a point I will return to later. For now, I want to outline the basic elements of the U.S.-Japan Project's efforts to locate and secure declassification of key official records, in the process showing how the Project makes use of, and in fact depends upon, the presence of important archival and declassification laws and regulations in the U.S.
In the U.S., the process of systematic review and declassification of U.S. diplomatic records held by the State Department has now reached the early 1960s while access to military records continues to lag somewhat behind. And the records of other relevant government agencies, such as Treasury, Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative, are in varying states of declassification.
The records of one key agency has already been discussed today, the CIA. We're only now beginning to see some selective declassification, though there are still major and extensive gaps in the open record of this critical agency which has particular bearing for those wishing to study and understand the development of U.S.-Japanese political relations in the post-war period.
As I began to organize the project, a first priority was to establish what was available among the declassified official U.S. records. This required extensive research in the U.S. National Archives located in Washington, D.C. and College Park, Maryland, where one can find the major archival collections of U.S. federal agencies. Here I was able to examine and collect copies of State Department records dating up through 1963 and Defense Department records, primarily the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, up through 1962. In addition to the National Archives, I was able to examine records held at the Presidential Libraries for Presidents Eisenhower through Carter.
In each of these places, there are finding aides to the available records which facilitate research. Based upon work in these archival collections, the Project was able to collect the most important documents already declassified. The range of subjects is broad, including documents on the re