Declassification sought of documents from Iraq
WASHINGTON -- House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra wants to declassify millions of pages of untranslated documents from Iraq collected by the US government over more than a decade.
The Michigan Republican says it's a way to learn what's inside more than 35,000 boxes that haven't been translated because the government doesn't have enough Arabic linguists with security clearances.
''Most people have acknowledged that we are never going to get through them," he said of the boxes. Hoekstra is hoping to work with the new Iraqi government to put the documents online so journalists, academics, and other researchers can sift through them.
Hoekstra has discussed the proposal with senior intelligence officials.
In a letter yesterday to the national intelligence director, Hoekstra and Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, made their case for the sweeping declassification.
Most of the documents were grabbed during the 2003 Iraq invasion and quickly classified, even though they were not a product of the US government.
Some date back to the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. 