A National Archives and Records Administration report shows that much of the United States' $30 million expenditure on declassifying records of its involvement with Nazi and Japanese war criminals could have been averted had the government complied with its own declassification rule.

The newly released final report of the working group created by the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act posits that too often documents are classified to avoid embarrassment or, more often still, simply because it is easy to do so without accountability.

The government is legally obligated to release all records that shed light on the extent of American involvement with German war criminals after the end of World War II. Similar disclosure was later added for Japanese war criminals.