Erroneous Declassification of Nuclear Weapons Information

An investigation was made of the events surrounding the erroneous declassification of documents obtained from a Department of Energy (DOE) library in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Declassification errors at the Los Alamos library occurred as part of a large-scale program which declassified nearly 1.5 million documents from 1971 to 1976. Some of the erroneously declassified documents contained information of a very sensitive nature that could damage U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapon technology. Errors were caused because many short cuts were used to expedite the declassification, a single group of individuals did not complete the review of documents, and DOE used reviewers who lacked classification expertise or were not technically competent in the subject matter of the reports. One very sensitive document was available to the public, either by request or through the public access section of the Los Alamos library, from July 1975 until it was found in May 1979. No records were kept as to how many persons had read or copied this document.