Reagan said upon the occasion of the change. ''This order enhances protection for national-security information without permitting excessive classification of documents by the government,'' Mr. Then, in 1982, President Reagan authorized a thorough renovation of the US classification system. President Carter pried open the file drawers even farther by requiring that government agencies review all 20-year-old documents for possible declassification.
In 1972, he signed an order establishing systematic declassification to clear out the piles of World War II documents then clogging government files.
Ironically, it was President Nixon who first gave the public widespread access to once-sensitive government documents. Classification standards are set by executive order, not laws passed by Congress. The roots of the dispute over classified documents lie in the fact that presidents have much control over what the government stamps ''secret,'' and which old files are dusted off and made public. Material dealing with the 1953 uprising in Iran is still stamped ''secret,'' although US diplomats have written about their involvement in the action. The United States, for instance, has let slip very little about its role in Guatemala's 1954 coup, Dr. ''In particular it is material dating from 1950 to 1954 that is being fought over,'' says Walter LaFeber, a Cornell history professor. This tight grip on old secrets, historians complain, is greatly hindering the writing of post World War II history. Under the Reagan administration, declassification of United States documents has dropped from 1980's record-high 90 million pages to 12 million pages last year. But over the last four years, the number of secret files being made public has been greatly reduced.
Once-classified documents such as these are the raw materials of history. ''Anything may happen, but we are still optimistic that some workable arrangement will be made which at least will keep oil flowing to the West.'' ''The cooler heads are in the minority here at the present,'' one flimsy blue dispatch says. Some, however, speak candidly of a society even then under great stress. Many of the papers it holds are not exciting: transfer orders, trade complaints, a decree that ladies' attire at the Shah's marriage will be ''the dress worn at tea, with hat.'' It is marked ''Tehran Embassy, General Records, 1951,'' and has just been cleared by National Archives declassifiers. The cardboard box of documents is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage.
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