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"J. William Leonard, who oversees declassification as head of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, said the threat that secret files might be made public without a security review had sent a useful chill through the bureaucracy.
"'Unfortunately, you sometimes need a two-by-four to get agencies to pay attention,' Mr. Leonard said. 'Automatic declassification was essentially that two-by-four.'"

The New York Times reports on the millions of documents that the federal government plans to declassify at the end of the year.