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WASHINGTON — Congress created the little-known Public Interest Declassification Board six years ago to address the growing problem of federal officials needlessly marking documents "Top Secret."

Yet the presidential advisory panel has yet to recommend declassifying a single page.

It has been hamstrung by a provision in its charter that requires the board to seek permission from President Bush before it can even review a classified document, let alone whether to recommend disclosing it.

As a result, open-government advocates say, the board does not have the power it needs to do its job.

Most recently, it has been unable to respond to a request from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to review two reports on intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.

"The board has yet to accomplish anything of significance," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy.

He noted that it took the White House and congressional leaders four years to appoint a single member to the board and six years to fund it.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to make an appointment reserved for him to the nine-member board.

"The board faces an uphill battle because they are called upon to second-guess the administration they serve, which is an awkward position to be in," Aftergood said.

L. Britt Snider, board chairman, said the panel is stymied over how to handle the request from the intelligence committee.

Snider said the board wants to review the reports and make a recommendation to the president about declassifying them, but the White House has not decided whether it will allow the board to conduct the review.

The board is frustrated by the cumbersome process of securing the president's approval first, Snider said.

As a result, the board asked Congress this week to remove the requirement from its charter.

Under the board's charter, the president would still have the final say over whether a document should be released to the public, but it would remove the first step of winning approval before starting a review.

"We are supposed to be a nonpartisan advocate of the public interest," Snider said. "When we are basically forbidden or not able to do something under our charter because the White House hasn't given us permission, it looks like a political thing rather than something that we should be looking at in the public's interest."