Referral
The act of routing a classified record to another agency that originated some of its information so that agency can review its own equity before the record is declassified or released.
Referral is the step in declassification review where one agency hands a record (or a copy) to another agency because the record contains classified information that the second agency originated. Under U.S. national security classification policy, no agency may unilaterally declassify or release another agency’s classified information, so any document that touches multiple agencies’ equities must be referred to each originating agency for its own line-by-line review and concurrence.
Referral matters because it is one of the biggest sources of delay and backlog in opening historical records. A single page can carry several agencies’ equities, and each referral adds a routing step, a waiting period, and another set of review decisions that must be reconciled before release. Unresolved or pending referrals are a common reason information stays redacted even when the holding agency is otherwise ready to release a file.
For example, a State Department cable summarizing a CIA assessment would be referred to the CIA, which decides what in its own contribution can be declassified; State cannot make that call alone.