Understanding the Reduced Access to Military Historical Records

by Monique Mousseau Taylor

What is happening with the current records situation

I have edited this first version that went out and made this a free post due to so many people wanting to share it. This is the first of what will likely be a few articles analyzing the current difficulties in accessing historical military records. However, to do that, there are some clear classifications that must be understood before we can see what is happening. So my approach is to assign the buckets of responsibility, the bodies of law, and the timeframe in which the events occurred. This is a brief outline only because I am attempting to breakdown a number of documents into a simple summarization.

First, to analyze this correctly, this has to be approached through a non-political lens or you cannot understand what is going on. What is happening now is the result of multiple federal laws, Department of Defense Directives, Executive Orders and Congressional legislative acts that took place through many Administrations of both parties.

Let me set out the buckets of responsibility we are talking about. The first bucket is the National Archives (NARA). (Both NARA and DoD are federal agencies - one holds the records and the other governs them). One of NARA’s responsibilities is the storage and care of official documents. NARA is governed by Administrative law. Why do you need this to understand the current situation? NARA is operating under Administrative law - that is regulatory law. So it is subject to its own required procedures. The Department of Defense is Federal and it is operating under different rules. Executive Orders, which have the weight of law to a certain extent that I will not go into there), were issued by various Presidents and are also heavily intertwined in this.

Current military records, or records that have not been declassified, are government records governed by Federal law. Once they are declassified, they are transferred to NARA according to a Records Schedule; otherwise they remain under the governments (military) control. Declassification and transfer to NARA are separate events. NARA holds classified and unclassified documents. Declassification does not automatically trigger transfer - it’s complicated I know.

Now let’s look at the major events that have culminated in the situation. If you want an easy one line explanation this article is not for you. Nothing in government happens overnight so we have to go back to 1994. In 1994, President Clinton signed a bulk declassification order - Executive Order (EO) 12937. This directed the records listed to be declassified, and, as you can see these are many of the records military historians use today. However, as is often the case, the EO did not specify how this would be done or establish a declassification process.

In 1995, another EO was issued, EO 12958 that started to sort out the parameters for declassification. And yes, the parameters for declassification should have been put in place prior to the bulk order to declassify the documents but they were not. This would result in a series of EOs attempting to clarify what could and could not be declassified, but too late for many sensitive documents.

In 1999 and 2000, the Special Historical Records Review Plan  (Kyl- Lott Amendment) was implemented and served to further streamline EO 12958 , to prevent some of the documents from being released. A regulation in 2001 addressed improper declassification, how to reclassify documents, and continuing damage control.

In March of 2003 President George W. Bush signed EO 13292 , which in a nutshell, adjusted classification levels, authority and timelines to try to prevent documents that pertained to national security and terrorism from being declassified. Further refinements were necessary, and a process for automatic declassification, timing of declassification, the process of declassification and who made that decision came down in still another EO, this time by President Obama in EO 13526 in 2009. All of this was done by Executive Order, not by Congressional legislation.

So this is a basic understanding of the Executive Orders, but this is overlaid with Department of Defense Directives. DOD Instruction 5015.02 (initially issued in 2015 under President Obama directs changes to it in its 2017 version under President Trump, regarding the military control over its records and outlines the procedures for selected documents transfer to NARA. I highly recommend you read it, the document I linked to was still undergoing changes but you will clearly see the DOD is to manage all records pertaining to the military. This the connection to what is happening today which is in part another tightening and cleaning up. DOD Instructions were issued in 2015, 2017, 2022, 2025 and 2026.

DOD Instruction 5400.17, initiated in 2022 (President Biden) became effective in 2025 during President Trumps administration and requires all social media/websites under the control or jurisdiction of the military to go through their postings, official military documents are to be removed and placed under the control of the Army Records Management Program - which requires a Common Access Card access. They can do this because it is a military record. Although military historians are seeing the effects of this, it is more widely making changes on military installations and their official webpages, according to various articles I read. The Instruction is not specifically aimed at historical military documents.

This most recent DOD Instructions is cited on the AMEDD Center of History & Heritage website which specifically cites DOD Instruction 5400.17 Official Use of Social media for Public Affairs Purposes, as the policy it is following. Their site also states this may result in the removal of some documents from their website and indeed it has. Stay with me here while I point out a few more things.

AMEDD is an official military site, so it falls under the federal government and DOD rules. At this point it is not clear where the removed records are going. Let me give you another scenario. The Eisenhower Library is a NARA Presidential Library, and, it now states that “The Textual Records Branch at Archives II is handling all reference inquiries on Army Unit Records collection effective June 30, 2025”. This is NARA College Park. Whether they are no longer working with researchers online and making the documents digitally available and still working with in person research I do not know. A simple inquiry to them may answer that.

In theory, all records transferred to NARA should be available to researchers but, it takes time to transfer them in, and nothing I have found so far requires that they be available online. The NARA website is not an easy website to navigate so that adds another wrinkle. The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) which was also used by researchers, is a DoD entity and therefore is subject to the DOD directives.

Because life is complicated, I am going to add several further issues impacting the situation. The budget showdowns in Congress, have reduced, and in some cases, restricted funding for many departments and institutions. The very experienced Special Collections librarians and archivists were caught in this, many were eligible to retire. So, due to the inability of Congress to reach a decision many experienced personnel quit or retired and there is now a staffing shortage. Consequently, access, hours and online digitization have been reduced. Conservation of the documents is often done when they are being digitized. With the reduction in digitization, the documents, which were not in the best condition, are now being pulled from access so they are not further damaged.

This is where we stand so far. Records are NOT being destroyed; destruction of documents by NARA requires an entire procedure under Records Schedules/Disposition authority under the Federal Records Act. NARA has to post the records it has destroyed and when I checked it it states there have been none in the past 4 years. The current administration is not trying to rewrite history; this is a continuation of a process that began before 1994 (1994 is only where I started) and a DOD Directive from 2022.

Yes, it is going to be tough to get the records for the foreseeable future. My best advice is to call or contact the archives and libraries to see if they are doing in person research. My best advice is to print out copies of the documents you research. My upcoming book General Patton and the Glider Resupply Mission in the Battle of the Bulge: Glider Pilots in the Siege of Bastogne has some 400 footnotes, some of which are now no longer accessible at the cited location because of this very situation. However, I printed the documents out with the full citation required by the institution holding it, and can back up my work and possibly track where each document has been refiled to

This post has been made free to subscribers. Please consider a paid subscription. All funds to researching and sharing my research with others.

*

This article was first published on my Substack, Forgotten Archives of History. Subscribe there for more of my research on the WWII glider pilots and the records behind their story.