NY Times editorial May 30 or 31 seen in International Herald Tribune May 31 contacts: Offtopic? Not in view of how easily the editors here severely criticize the CIA, while having performed such gymnastics to denounce the SJ Merc CIAcocaine series. One might suspect that such journals as the NYT actually had a special phone line letting them know what to do. No Job for the CIA The Central Intelligence Agency has a way of exceeding the worst expectations about its behavior. After stalling on the declassification of mountains of secret papers about its past actions, the agency now concedes that many of the documents were destroyed by protective officials several decades ago. The CIA has clearly forfeited the right to manage the declassification of its records. That job should be turned over to an independent body. This past week the CIA released a small stack of documents about its role in the 1954 coup that toppled the elected leader of Guatemala and installed a murderous military dictatorship. The papers include some previously unknown plans for assassinations that officials insist were never carried out. The agency promises more Guatemala records in the months ahead. But the pace of this exercise has been glacial, and many of the documents made available this past week were heavily excised to shield information already in the public record. Other early agency operations will never yield their secrets. Only a few dozen pages remain from the files about the 1953 coup in ban that put Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi back in power. Nick Cullather, a historian who worked for the agency in 1992 and 1993, reported this past week that records of covert agency operations in Indonesia and Guyana had been destroyed. No one apparently bothered to tell CIA Directors Robert Gates and James Woolsey, who had publicly promised ambitious efforts to declassify the agency's records. The ClA's fight against openness started long before Mr. Gates or Mr. Woolsey ran the agency. The CLS has stubbornly resisted cooperating in the preparation of the government's own histories of American foreign relations. The agency was forced by Congress to establish an internal Historical Review Panel to propose declassifications, but the group has had little influence and did not even meet from 1991 to 1993. All records from the agency's directorate of operations are exempt from NFreedom of Information requests. Many of the documents the CLA has made public over the years are meaningless because so much information is blacked out. Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihatl and Jesse Helms have proposed the establishment of an interagency board to manage the declassification of all government records. This would help but is likely to leave individual agencies with too much control over what information is made public. A more decisive remedy is needed for the CIA. Either the board proposed by the two senators or another body made up of historians and other informed citizens ought to control the declassification of CIA materials. The agency can be consulted and its interests honored in cases where secrecy is required, but the impulse should be to declassify whenever possible. Congress should also remove the exemption of the operations directorate from declassification. b addition the CIA must comply with laws requiring that its documents be turned over periodically to the National Archives. The destruction of historical records bespeaks a contempt for the principles of democracy. Unfortunately, that is nothing new at the CIA. THE NEW YORK TIMES.