Classified Documents

[Traveler]

I worked for several years for the government and delt with classified documents.  The first thing I would add to what is being reported is that there are 3 kinds of classifications utilized in our government – confidential, secret and top-secret.   Reporting that there are misplaced classified government documents does not mean anything unless the classification is top-secret.   And there is a lot of problems with top secret documents.  Not all top-secret documents are created equal.  There are classifications of top-secret documents that carry a violation of the law even to publicly identify that they exist.

I will say one thing about top-secret documents.  It is violation of the law to remove top-secret documents from a secure place.  It is a violation of the law to have top-secret documents even if you are ignorant of having them.  If your have a security clearance you are personally responsibility for all classified documents in your care – even if you have others working for you and using the documents in your care.

If any documents in the poor care of Biden that fell into his care as vice president were top-secret – he should have been arrested.  If those that knew about this infraction of the law and did not act – they should be arrested.  But all this rests on whether or not any of the documents were top-secret.  Misusing any top-secret with additional classification were misused – it is an act of treason.  We heard this accusation when Trump was found to have top-secret documents.  But the problem with the president is that he can declassify documents.  There is a process but the democrats have a problem in that the justice department said it would not prosecute Clinton because their action in misusing classified documents was not by intent.

However, this all turns out – our government looks silly and unable to handle security with any level of care.   Unless Biden did not have a single top-secret document.

 

The Traveler

[NeuroTypical]

I'm with you to a point, Traveler.  But at the end of the day, the President has pretty much the ultimate and final say in what's classified and what's declassified.   It's made pretty clear in the Supreme Court case Navy V. Egan 1988.  (Underlining mine:)
 

Quote

The President, after all, is the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." U.S.Const., Art. II, § 2. His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security and to determine whether an individual is sufficiently trustworthy to occupy a position in the Executive Branch that will give that person access to such information flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.

As anyone who detests bureaucracy and the power it grabs for itself, I'm totally unimpressed with both the Trump news and Biden news that they had classified stuff in violation of policy.  Not a fan of policy.

That said, today's news of Biden's 2nd cache of secret stuff, was apparently taken when he was Vice President.  And veeps aren't the president, and don't have any authority to classify or declassify squat.

[The Folk Prophet]

Almost everything should be declassified. A few things... nuclear codes, spies names, etc., qualify. The rest....declassify! Problem solved. 

[LDSGator]

18 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Almost everything should be declassified. A few things... nuclear codes, spies names, etc., qualify. The rest....declassify! Problem solved. 

Yup. 

[Traveler]

1 hour ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Almost everything should be declassified. A few things... nuclear codes, spies names, etc., qualify. The rest....declassify! Problem solved. 

I disagree somewhat.  There are lots (tons) of things that should be classified top-secret.  For example, technical specs for weapon system, drone communication encryption, satellites, (protocols, communication encryption and capabilities) interior network protocols, engineers working on classified projects, black opps, various research and development – just to name a few. 

I do agree that foreign agreements, political opperations and money spent on elected officials and their staff budgets and their itinerary and who they meet with and minutes of any meetings with lobbyists (especially congressional investigations).   I also agree that any domestic legal proceedings should be released when completed.  We should have all the data associated with the Kennedy assassination long ago.  

 

The Traveler

[NeuroTypical]

15 hours ago, LDSGator said:

15 hours ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Almost everything should be declassified. A few things... nuclear codes, spies names, etc., qualify. The rest....declassify! Problem solved. 

Yup. 

I'm a huge fan of transparency, where the people should know everything their govt is up to, every dollar spent, and on what.  But yeah, Troop deployments, equipment in the field, weapons systems, logistics information, meetings and agreements made with other nations, intelligence gathered and guessed at, and a million other things that we know, could get people (and our nation) hurt (and killed) if the wrong people know these things.   So yeah, while I want to know everything, I don't want our adversaries or enemies to know.   

I remember one of Tom Clancy's books dealt with this - one of our navy vessels was damaged and in the bay for 8 months of repairs.  The govt allowed two reporters to file occasional on scene footage and reports.   The week of the reporter's final broadcast, showing the vessel returning to sea, the vessel was halfway across the world winning the battle for the good guy.  The govt had allowed these reporters access, and got their agreement to lie to the entire world about the pace of repairs, allowing our military to pull one over on our enemies, while at the same time giving the reporters the truth, and the rights to tell the full story after the operation was over. 

Intellectual property protections and theft is a related topic to govt classifying things.  When I come to work, I walk past a row of patents that give my company a competitive advantage.  We invest time and effort and money in inventing new things.  It's always a sad day when someone shows up with a cheap foreign knockoff someone made that looks like our stuff.  Sometimes, it's a cheap crappy copy.  Other times, it's an exact match, meaning they stole our protected information.

[LDSGator]

4 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

So yeah, while I want to know everything, I don't want our adversaries or enemies to know.   

Oh, agree fully. Like you I’m a transparency guy. But I admit there are limits like what you listed. 

Edited January 12, 2023 by LDSGator

[LDSGator]

I generally use the cheating spouse test. If you aren’t cheating, then you give your spouse your phone. If you are cheating, you hide your passcodes, etc. 

 

In most situations that applies to the government. 

[Carborendum]

16 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I'm with you to a point, Traveler.  But at the end of the day, the President has pretty much the ultimate and final say in what's classified and what's declassified. 

And that, really, is the only difference between the Biden documents vs the Trump documents.  At time the documents were removed from "official care", Trump was President and could unilaterally declassify them.  But Biden was only V.P.  He did NOT have that authority. 

Biden NOW has the authority. But it does not change the fact that AT THE TIME THE RECORDS WERE REMOVED from official custody that the documents were classified, and he was not the Pres.  And, therefore, subject to all the legal implications that go with it.

I disagree with @Traveler when he says that it "does not mean anything unless the classification is top-secret."

I never had top secret clearance.  But I did have secret clearance.  And I was specifically told by my security team that I couldn't share ANY information that was even classified as FOUO (For Official Use Only).  We'd send emails all the time with the FOUO designation.  And the security team specifically told me that if I copied any unauthorized individuals on such emails I could get in big trouble. 

I never bothered to ask what the "big trouble" was.  So, maybe they were just trying to scare me.  But that is what I was told.

[Traveler]

10 hours ago, Carborendum said:

And that, really, is the only difference between the Biden documents vs the Trump documents.  At time the documents were removed from "official care", Trump was President and could unilaterally declassify them.  But Biden was only V.P.  He did NOT have that authority. 

Biden NOW has the authority. But it does not change the fact that AT THE TIME THE RECORDS WERE REMOVED from official custody that the documents were classified, and he was not the Pres.  And, therefore, subject to all the legal implications that go with it.

I disagree with @Traveler when he says that it "does not mean anything unless the classification is top-secret."

I never had top secret clearance.  But I did have secret clearance.  And I was specifically told by my security team that I couldn't share ANY information that was even classified as FOUO (For Official Use Only).  We'd send emails all the time with the FOUO designation.  And the security team specifically told me that if I copied any unauthorized individuals on such emails I could get in big trouble. 

I never bothered to ask what the "big trouble" was.  So, maybe they were just trying to scare me.  But that is what I was told.

When I worked for the Defense Department (45+ years ago) - anyone could get a confidential clearance with a standard background check that took about a week.  To have a secret clearance required a routine FBI background check (about 3 months) and you were good for life (unless you were convicted of something – other than routine traffic stuff).  Top secret required a much more extensive background check (about a year) to be repeated regularly every 5 years and occasional background checks depending on particular projects you may be offered to work on.  In addition, security debriefings yearly and whenever a project was completed and a requirement to report in every 48 hours.  It was also required to notify a security officer before leaving the country and certain foreign countries were off limits for visiting.  I could not tell my wife, or anyone else what I was doing at work or projects I worked on.  I was not allowed to put the projects I worked on – on my resume but I was given items for my resume.  I never heard of any legal action for security violations for anything less that top secret.

For confidential (I assume confidential is what you call FOUO) – someone would tell you to not do it again and ask who else knew about the infraction.  For secret you would have to go before a board and confess everything.  What was disliked the most was leaking secret stuff to the press.  Top secret was a very different matter – I only knew of one case and that person was tried and convicted of treason.   I do not know this for sure but it was my understanding that foreign governments would only pay for top secret stuff.  I assume the stuff leaked from the supreme court and congressional commities was secret.  If it was TS - someone would go to prison.

There is one other classification which is TSSI for top secret special intelligence.  I thought no one was ever supposed to talk about that but Fox News had a guy they interviewed that talked about it so I will mention it in this post.  I do not know very much because I withdrew my application because it became more intrusive than I cared to deal with.  If Biden or Trump had any TSSI documents they should go to prison (my opinion).

 

The Traveler

Edited January 13, 2023 by Traveler