The US government has reacted strongly to Bradley Mannings alleged disclosure of recent diplomatic cables via WikiLeaks. We have heard State Department officials make their good case that indiscriminate leaks of contemporary communications however much they contribute to public understanding of foreign policy can undermine diplomacy and endanger human lives. But what we havent heard is that the Department has been withholding from the public historical documents that bear strongly on two ongoing foreign policy crises. For years the State Department has refused to publish two long-completed books of documents that would throw valuable light on the roots of Americas problems today in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iran. Even 50 or more years after the events they depict, these books could have positive effects on US foreign policy. Under a 1991 law, the State Department is required to continue to publish, within 30 years, all records needed to provide a comprehensive documentation of...major foreign policy decisions and actions including relevant covert operations. A timely process for appropriate declassification is provided. The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series is a primary source for researching and understanding American foreign policy and is widely used by scholars, students, journalists and diplomats. But two anticipated products of the 1991 law 'retrospective volumes on Congo (1960-68) and Iran (1952-54) have never appeared. The manuscripts were completed many years ago after historians criticised earlier volumes for ignoring reported Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) programmes that overthrew democratically elected governments and installed dictatorships. Incredibly, the 'retrospective books have been stuck in endless 'declassification reviews for up to a decade Whats the hold up on declassification? According to leading academic advisers to the State Department and the CIA, the latter agency has been the major force holding up the Congo and Iran publications. As years go by, the CIA keeps finding new passages in the texts where it feels declassification would be harmful. It also insists on taking new looks at previously approved portions as its reviewing officers turn over. Other reasons for delay have included disorganisation in the State Department Historians Office and the absence of any mechanism or political will to achieve finality in the inter-agency review process. Although the early political momentum associated with the 1991 law produced a major 'retrospective volume on the CIAs 1954 military coup in Guatemala (2003), that opening quickly closed. Consider the Congo manuscript. The State Departments Historical Advisory Committee reviewed it in 2001, concluding: [It] sheds new light on major, highly significant events in the history of US relations with the Congo in the 1960s. Much of that lost decade has been consumed by the CIAs resistance to identifying key Congolese leaders on its payroll, the CIA station chief, and the amounts of money spent on specific activities. Similar problems have beset the Iran manuscript, essentially complete in early 2004. The latest issue raised by the CIA concerns potential British secret service (MI-6) objections to descriptions of the joint 1953 US and British-backed coup that brought the shah to power. Yet there are no MI-6 documents in the compilation, and important aspects of the British role are already on the public record (including memoirs by US and British officials and a leaked CIA internal study published in The New York Times). Further, the State Department historians strategy has been to refer to the British role only in the introduction to the volume. A detailed public account of a decade of CIA political and paramilitary intervention in Congo on behalf of dictatorial forces led by former president Joseph Mobutu who eventually destroyed social institutions, spawning internal and regional wars that killed millions might strengthen Americans political will to support peacemaking and recovery in an important region. Telling the full story of the US-supported coup in Iran would help Americans understand why anti-Americanism has been such a prominent feature of the current regime that seems set on pursuing nuclear weapons. Also, an official accounting of the manipulations that installed the shah would be appreciated by the Iranian people (a major focus of Americas Iran diplomacy). Similar CIA truth telling has been appreciated by Guatemalans and would probably be welcomed by the Congolese. Tens of millions of people in these countries and elsewhere are generally aware of the past CIA role sometimes in distorted form. It is the official admission and accounting that is meaningful, corrects distortions, and provides some closure. One thing is certain: There can be no guarantee that either book will appear until Americans insist on their right to their own history. Christian Science Monitor