Cold War secrets unveiled

As part of an overhaul of secrecy rules urged by Bill Clinton, the National Security Council has drafted an order that would make public millions of documents from the Cold War and slash the number of new secret records, Reuter reports from New York.

A report in yesterday's New York Times said the order would require the declassification of secret records after 25 years, while newly created secret documents would be declassified after 10 years at most. Only the head of an agency, such as the Secretary of Defense or the director of Central Intelligence, would have the power to stop a document's release under the new order, the report said.