The Card Memo

On March 19, 2002, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card sent a memo to all agency and department heads titled, “Action to Safeguard Information Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction and Other Sensitive Documents Related to Homeland Security.” It told them to review records management procedures with an eye to protecting information that could be misused to harm the national security.

Take a new look at your files, he said, and determine which documents that aren’t classified should be and what other information should be treated as sensitive even if not classified. He attached to his request a memorandum from the government’s top FOIA and classification officers, who said agencies should proceed "on a case-by-case" basis to evaluate sensitivity and the benefits of information sharing in the context of the Ashcroft memo and its emphasis on the legal authority to withhold.

Card’s memo said that this “sensitive but unclassified” homeland security information could include records that deal with the agency, public infrastructure the agency might regulate or monitor, some internal databases (reports, data the agency has collected, maps, etc.), vulnerability assessments, and information provided to the government by private firms, such as chemical companies. It said that sensitive but unclassified information could often be withheld using the exemption (b)(2) for national security information.

It also directed that some classifications be extended beyond their 10 or 25 year limits and to classification sensitive information that hadn’t been classified.

One effect of the memo was that a number of agencies reviewed their website postings. More than 6,000 pages were withdrawn, by one estimate.