In the United States as in the United Kingdom, historians report obstacles to access to classified documents, but also destruction of archives. Professor of history at Columbia University in New York, Matthew Connelly follows the issue of archival preservation in his country with concern. “The situation in the United States is rather depressing, he confides. It’s not just the delays in declassification that keep getting worse. Much less records are communicated compared to twenty years ago. It is also linked to the fact that archivists are so overwhelmed by the volume of documents that they destroy many without real examination ”.
On February 4, 2020, Mr. Connelly reported in the New York Times several worrying cases of archive destruction. First of all, he recalled that, during his presidency, Donald Trump had made a habit of tearing up his papers and throwing them away, in order to avoid possible prosecution. A flagrant violation of the Presidential Records Act. On the other hand, it revealed that the National Archives had authorized the destruction of millions of documents, many of which related to immigrant rights.
Regarding access to American archives, Christian Wenkel, lecturer in history at the University of Artois (Pas-de-Calais), notes that there are few differences with France. “Theoretically access to classified American archives is easier, but the exemptions take longer and, in the“ declassified ”boxes, you find a lot of ghosts [des passages caviardés] in documents that remain classified. In either case, it takes little for an administration to consider a document as still sensitive, even decades later ”, details the historian.
Many obstacles
Robert Gildea, professor of history at the University of Oxford, observes a similar situation in the United Kingdom: if, in appearance, the system is more liberal than in France, researchers, on the other hand, come up against many obstacles. “The National Archives must in principle communicate official documents after thirty years. But there are a lot of restrictions regarding national security, justice, personal cases… ”, notes the historian, who reports a very relative openness of secret archives. “Ten years ago, during a lawsuit brought by Mau Mau victims of colonial power in Kenya, it was discovered that at independence, in 1963, we were either destroyed or hidden in Hanslope Park [Buckinghamshire] the colonial archives ”, he explains. A member of a commission from the British Academy, he visited Hanslope Park in 2014, where documents he was able to consult were often redacted. A practice that does not exist in France …
