I see comments like this a lot.
I think the most disturbing part of this is the issuing agencies don’t track the classified documents well enough to know that they are missing, and they don’t ask for them back.
So here’s a short primer on classified documents – my summary of Andrew McCabe educating all of us about classified documents, in episode 7 of the podcast Jack. I wrote this up because I know some of you will not listen to podcasts no matter how useful they are.
I also have a 7-minute clip from the podcast below. For what it’s worth, I think Jack is the best podcast out there for all things special counsel related.
CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS & CLASSIFICATION LEVELS
After a background check, you can get clearance at one of the three levels:
- Confidential
- Secret
- Top Secret
There are extensive rules at each level for how you are able to transport, store, and work with documents at all three levels. You receive training, and your training has to be renewed every year if you have access to sensitive information.
A classified document that is somewhere that it doesn’t belong is called a spill.
Even with a clearance at any level, you have to have a need to know before you can access classified materials, plus there are additional limits to who can see some Top Secret materials:
- Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI)
- Code Word Protected Information
- Originator Controlled (ORCON)
Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI)
- SCI is a an additional designation given to SOME top secret information.
- SCI documents require a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF).
- A SCIF is sometimes called a Vault.
- SCI documents must stay in a SCIF, unless you have permission to transport the SCI document(s) to another SCIF.
- SCI documents are not serialized or tracked.
Code Word Protected Information
- SCI is a an additional designation given to SOME top secret information.
- The most sensitive programs the government is involved in are protected by code words.
- You have to be on a very small list of people in order to have access to code word protected information.
- Only code word protected documents are serialized and tracked.
- When code word protected information comes to your office, it’s in the hands of an agency security officer.
- You have to sign for the document before you look at it.
- You typically have to look at it and then give it right back, even if you are working in a SCIF.
- Then it’s taken by the security officers and is stored in a special place.
- There is a list of all the people who are exposed to that particular code word protected information.
- Remember: code word protected documents are the only documents that are serialized or tracked.
Originator Controlled Information (ORCON)
- SCI is a an additional designation given to SOME top secret information.
- ORCON documents require the creator of the document give permission to specific people before they can look at a document.
- Information that originates with a foreign government, for instance, requires permission from that foreign government before it can be shared with anyone.
Andrew McCabe also talks about how the way in which you interact with classified materials changes with your role.
DAY-TO-DAY DIFFERENCES, DEPENDING ON YOUR ROLE
As a mid-level person accessing Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI)
As a mid-level person with top secret classification, his office was a SCIF. He worked with dozens of top secret documents every day, he says he was “buried” in top secret SCI documents. Receiving dozens of Top Secret SCI documents every day, he would have to read them all, and he could carry those documents out of his office to another agent’s office.
The other folks he worked with also had the same classification level, so those documents could be discussed with other agents that had a need to know. At the end of the day, those documents never left the SCIF.
As a principal in an organization accessing Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI)
At this level – as a principal in an organization like the FBI, as Vice President, as POTUS – you need access to Top Secret, SCI information all the time, 24 hours a day. Staffers are constantly carrying these documents around.
- At work.
- At home.
- When you travel in the US.
- When you travel overseas.
“There are people on your staff whose sole responsibility is to take those documents, transport them, carry it, store it, protect it, and give it to you when you need it.”
“As a principal, it is literally following you around everywhere you go.”
“Special security folks are responsible for taking care of all those documents.”
As President or Vice President, for instance, the documents follow you to the residence, to the office, as you get ready for the next briefing or a phone call with a world leader.
I have clipped the first 7 minutes of Andrew McCabe’s terrific explanation of classified documents.
Open thread.
narya
Thank you for excerpting this! I listened to it the other day and thought it was a really excellent discussion, and it was really helpful for understanding the ins and outs of the whole thing.
WaterGirl
@narya: Thanks!
I have been wanting to do this since I listened to the podcast last Sunday, but this took a ton of time so I wasn’t able to get to it until today.
oldgold
Please send this post to Merrick Garland.
WaterGirl
@oldgold: Meaning what?
JML
It’s also important to remember that we seriously over-classify documents in the US government. Information that is available in public sources is still often considered “classified”, almost more out of habit than any real need. (I saw this often when I worked in budget at DoD)
There’s also many things that get classified retroactively, meaning it might not have had any classification attached to it initially when read by a principal and then later a decision was made to classify the material.
Baud
You forgot the most classified of all: For Baud’s Eyes Only.
WaterGirl
I obviously have no inside information, but knowing all of this about classified documents and how they are handled leads me to believe that Ron Klain, as chief of staff, has to feel some responsibility for this whole mess.
Knowing that classified documents from as far back as when Joe Biden was a senator have been found leads me to one of two conclusions: 1) maybe there is a train of classified spills following nearly everyone who handles classified documents, or 2) maybe someone/s on Biden’s staff was not good at handling classified documents.
Either way, I can’t see how Joe Biden himself mishandled any classified documents.
Mike in NC
I had a TS/SCI clearance for 30 years in the Navy and went through multiple extensive investigations over the years to qualify for it and retain it. Still blows my mind that career criminals like Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and that entire rotten fucking family were immediately given security clearances that they would never otherwise have remotely qualified for. Something is deeply broken in our government.
Baud
Also too, thanks for the primer. Very informative. This really is a full service blog.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I didn’t mention that since the only document that currently holds that special designation is my personal diary.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
The President controls security clearances. He was the thing deeply broken in the government.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Haha. Your SCIF or mine?
WaterGirl
@Baud: I hope you’ll listen to the 7-minute clip I made. Since it’s just an audio clip, you wouldn’t really be listening to a podcast, in case you don’t want to violate your ‘no podcasts’ vow. :-)
Plus, Andrew McCabe has such a great voice, I literally could listen to him reading the phone book.
WaterGirl
@Baud: hahaha
Feathers
@JML: This. When I found out it was something that wasn’t tracked, I definitely moved this down to the misdemeanor at best category.
Sissela Bok’s Secrets is a Cold War era book on the danger of over classification. Checking the publication date in Wikipedia, I learned it came out the same year her mother, Alva Myrdal, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her disarmament work.
oldgold
@WaterGirl: He needs help. Naming Merrick Garland AG was a mistake. Good man in the wrong job.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
You remind me of my drug dealer “Just one hit,” indeed.
WaterGirl
@oldgold: What are you questioning? That Merrick Garland assigned a Special Counsel to investigate classified documents Biden found?
This investigation will surely clear Biden of any bad intentions, and that’s the only way anyone is ever charged. Accidentally fucking up doesn’t get you charged.
Covering up your fuckup is what gets you charged.
Or is it something else you think Garland has mishandled?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: @oldgold: I think it was a complaint about Garland appointing someone to investigate Biden’s documents.
Feathers
@Mike in NC: Another way the Republicans have broken all the norms. They’ve realized that becoming an elected official means you are essentially above the law. There were sound reasons for this, but once criminals start running for office to escape prosecution, the norms need to quickly shift. Same with having to prove intent for “white collar” crimes. We need to start having first and second degree versions of these charges.
Eljai
Thanks for this, WaterGirl! I had a lot of questions but was too lazy/busy to do some research. I will definitely check out that podcast.
delphinium
Thanks so much for writing this up-very informative! As someone who worked for a bit in document control for a couple small biopharma companies, can sympathize with trying to track and retrieve documents. After a layoff at 1 of the companies, a lab notebook from several years prior was found shoved into an abandoned desk drawer. Very, very bad as these notebooks often contain proprietary information and may be needed for legal cases thus should always be stored in a secured location when not in use and scanned at regular intervals so information doesn’t get lost. But people are people and getting them to return items/follow requirements doesn’t always happen.
oldgold
@WaterGirl
I think he has mishandled virtually everything. His approach to the job of AG is wrong. Old bench jockeys are not suited for the job of USAG.
Soprano2
Thanks for doing this, it was helpful. Knowing that those docs follow some people everywhere makes it easier to understand how something like this happened to Biden. I listen to “Jack” and agree it’s good, although I could have done without the hour-long bio of Smith they did. Thirty minutes would have been plenty.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think he could have realistically done anything else.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: I think that commenter’s been bitching about Garland for a long time now.
A lot of people who should know better (and I have no idea if old gold is in that category) seem to think “indictment” is the end of the legal road for trump, and get very angry about it.
Soprano2
@oldgold: What specifically do you think should have been done? I’m honestly curious, because I see sentiments like this a lot but rarely anything specific other than “TFG should be in prison”.
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: Okay, what should his approach have been?
@WaterGirl: IMO he needed to avoid even the appearance on impropriety, so I agree with you.
Another Scott
Thanks for the excellent summary. It’s a good top-level overview of the system.
Of course, it quickly gets very, very murky and complicated. E.g. The President is the Classifying Authority, but delegates that authority down to others, who delegate it down to others, etc. Some GS-12 working on some new technology at a DoD lab could come up with some new idea that needs to be classified, so that creator has to know and understand all the rules, explain the significance to her management and the organization’s delegated classifying authority, and anyone in that chain could potentially “spill” stuff if not careful.
The system isn’t bad. The system is complicated because life is complicated. (E.g. some Twitter dude said that “obviously conversations with the Ambassador to Monaco shouldn’t be Top Secret” – I think that is just wrong. Diplomatic conversations must be treated with the utmost care or other countries won’t talk frankly to us.) Maybe the terms C/S/TS could be changed to something else with less baggage and less James Bond connotations, but the need for the system is pretty clear to me.
And the people in the system know that the world won’t end if TS information leaks. The point is to control access to make sure that when it does get out (either by design after decades, via an official release, or via a leak), it does as little damage as possible. Humans make mistakes, and worse, but the country has to have ways of minimizing the damage.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
Bless their British hearts, BBC managed to find a Politico reporter to break down the latest Biden docs find, and between the serial finds and the fact the FBI is now involved he gravely concludes this will be a big problem in voter’s minds come November 2024, because he’s now “the same as Trump.” Just shoot me.
Spanky
The thing is, the great majority of classified documents these days are electronic, and are emailed, copied, etc as needed, so tracking would be difficult, at best.
Network systems exist at different classification levels and are entirely separated from The Internet. Mostly. Usually.
Some Presidents (e.g. tfg) no doubt refused to deal with online docs and had to have physical copies of everything. And physical copies are easier to manage when on the move.
oldgold
For starters, no special counsel for either Trump or Biden. It has been a half century since special counsels have produced anything but mischief and worse.
Remember in DC appearances in the end, like $3.25, will get you a bad cup of coffee.
Treat Trump like a citizen. There is no office of former President.
I know I am in a distinct minority here concerning Merrick Garland’s fitness for the job. But, as some may remember, that was the case with the formerly sainted Mueller, too.
WV Blondie
@Spanky: And physical copies are easier to spirit away without leaving a trace, especially since there isn’t a good way to track who’s got the documents over time. Electronic docs leave an electronic trail.
Geo Wilcox
That shit head in TX has been indicted for almost 7 years and he is still in office, Indictments mean absolutely jack shit unless they are followed up.
Cheryl from Maryland
So far, I don’t know of any report stating if there were any Secret or Top Secret documents found at Biden’s home and offices. We KNOW there were Top Secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago. As for classified documents — Biden’s schedule as VP was classified. There’s a lack of discrimination between these issues.
As for Trump, the way Top Secret documents were found at his residence makes me think of my father in the early stages of dementia — important documents near at hand but also mixed with items that should have been in the trash.
Wapiti
If there are classified documents from Biden’s time as Senator, I wonder how many Senators have stuff in the stacks at their home offices as well. Maybe there needs to be some system for having outside eyes (USG, but not their aides) go through all of their stuff.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Another Scott: My personal take on this is Trump, as usual fucked the security process up, and the Biden’s admin is getting the government, it’s contractors back to taking this seriously and Biden is setting the example by showing even the POTUS has to follow the rules.
Russia and China devote a lot of effort to spy on the US, so this isn’t some joke issue. Heck, the DoD sub contractor, I work for someone tried to do a security breach last year and we work on some really low end stuff security wise.
JCNZ
@Baud: I didn’t mention that since the only document that currently holds that special designation is my personal diary.
That’s EXACTLY the reason there should be a “like” feature on this site (or at least a “crying with laughter” emoji, Cole be damned!). Some comments are too good to be allowed to slip by.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: Mueller presented a pretty clear case of obstruction of justice to the relevant authority, the Republican-controlled Congress (and by extension, the American people) who chose to ignore it.
People who actually know things (so, not me) about criminal prosecutions (which, again, are only the start of a long and difficult road) say Garland is likely to indict trump. If and when that happens, trump, as a (very wealthy) citizen, will have rights and defense lawyers and those defense lawyers will be able to raise all sorts of objections to a judge, who might well be a member of the Federalist Society, about which witnesses and evidence will eventually be presented to a jury, a jury made up not of twelve Liz Cheneys or federal judges or Constitutional scholars or engaged (and rightfully enraged) blog commenters, but of ordinary citizens, and trump and his expensive lawyers will need to convince one of those twelve jurors that the DOJ has not proved its case to meet the subjective standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. And if they do, then there is the appeals process.
I’m a fan of the Jan 6 Committee, but I think one bad thing about it is it’s given a lot of people, including again, a great many who should know better, a skewed, simplistic, and self-indulgent idea of what the criminal process against trump would look like.
piratedan
@oldgold: i disagree with you for the following reasons….
either the DOJ is independent or its not, if its independent, then the guy running it is in charge and after the previous occupant shitting on precedent, the institution itself and his penchant for only investigating who the President choose to point him at means that Biden appointed a guy who will follow the rules and treat everything seriously. Does it suck in an instance like this, but yes, if we’re going to decry the damage done to the institution and not just be pissed off because it was Dems and their allies being abused, then we sit back and let this run it’s course if we actually care about concepts like fairness and due process and integrity being part of the job.
Anyone who is arguing in bad faith that both transgressions are “the same”, well we already are aware of them. My issue is that while appearances and context matter, neither of those are the concern of the MSM which is looking for a profit and feel no compelling motive to share any of that unless they can turn a buck on it. So we have to rely on those people who do make the context a key element and do what we can to promote that.
There are many times when I want to regress to my inner 8 year old and punch back on this shit, but I have yet to be convinced that punching back is going to make the impact that I want with people who are inclined to prevent any context from being shared, much less explained.
davecb
An accompanying definition:
The other two levels are Confidential, a level that includes personal information and Restricted, which are documents not to be distributed to unauthorized persons. After that there is Unclassified, which can include Sensitive material that for some reason isn’t considered Restricted.
(I used to administer an “orange book” B2 multi-level secure computer system which Sun Microsystems made. I only ever used it for non-military trade-secret material that we were holding in trust for others)
oldgold
Yes, for a man in cognitive decline, Mueller led one hell of an investigation. Not.
Captain C
@Baud: I assume those must be read without pants on.
Carlo Graziani
Good summary.
There is an important addendum, however: The US government in fact has two separate high-level systems for classifying sensitive information as secret. The TS/SCI system that you describe was created by Executive Order, and arguably leaves the President with essentially unlimited authority over secrecy status, declassification, etc.
The other system is the “Restricted Data” (RD) classification hierarchy, which applies to information related to nuclear weapons. This was created by legislation, specifically the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, and is far more complex and burdensome with regards to declassification. There’s an oldish but good summary by the Federation of Amrican Scientists that emphasizes, among other things, that
Also, here’s a very good article at Lawfare explaining the origins of RD, and the distinctions with respect to SCI. One key distinction is that the various categories of RD cover information rather than documents, and that all information considered even peripherally relevant to nuclear weapons is “born secret”, rather than classified by deliberate bureaucratic action. Meaning that even if the President wished to declassify some RD, there would necessarily have to be a log of what was declassified, because that same information would change its classification status within the potentially tens of thousands of US documents that reference it. This is a legal requirement imposed by the AEA.
Needless to say, there was in fact RD material at Mar-a-Lago, and no paper trail to indicate any process of declassification. Trump’s claims of psychic mental declassification powers are unavailing with respect to RD, because the AEA binds him too, and did when he was President. So the particular RD-related worms that crawled out of the can potentially represent considerably greater legal jeopardy to him than any of the mere TS/SCI files detailing gossip about Macron, or intelligence about PLA capabilities.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wapiti: I expect a lot of former (and possibly present) Senators are checking their offices.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oldgold: Right, Andrew Weissman or Sally Yates (who for reasons I’ve never quite grokked a lot of people seem convinced would have been super-duper aggressive as AG) or Adam Schiff would have gotten Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to impeach, convict and remove trump.
davecb
Even more off-topic (:-))
Multi-level secure system administrators get driven crazy by folks who need confidential or Secret material in their Top Secret work, and move them to Top Secret. Either they become unavailable to the people who have Secret (like me) because they’ve been moved, or you end up with one copy at Top Secret, and one at Secret that’s more up to date. “Levels” are a pain.
What isn’t a pain is categories, like “naval sonar”, “microwave radar” and the like. They’re what caused us to create “compartments” inside Top Secret, SCI.
oldgold
@piratedan: “either the DOJ is independent or its not”
Exactly so. But, like a soon to be dead armadillo, Merrick Garland is meandering down the yellow line of the legal highway.
Gvg
@Mike in NC: That is on the voters. Nothing is a higher authority in a democracy than election results. The laws are made by the people who are elected. When we elected a fool or crook or traitor to the highest authority in our government we ARE going to have serious problems.
I am thinking Trump would obviously not follow rules, not bother to appoint people to fill roles he thought were useless or a nuisance, or fill them with people who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job properly. And even if they knew how, he could order them not to anytime he wanted. Mostly he had the authority to do it. Some jobs had enough isolation from the executive to resist. Other maybe knew they didn’t and tried to sneak around and do their jobs without getting noticed and ordered to do the wrong thing. Like the people taping his torn up documents back together. Recently read that Trump didn’t read the news unless someone pointed it out to him. Suspect no one told him that was happening even though it was widely reported for years, or he might have tried to stop it.
I should have wondered why he hadn’t made a fuss about that since he wanted those docs all destroyed. Other people who didn’t want to go to jail must have not told him.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: Yup. Nuclear stuff is a whole ‘nother category. And it restricts what even the President can do with it.
ECFR.gov:
A President cannot just “think about it and declassify it” – there’s a process. There’s always a process for this stuff.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Doug R
@Baud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id86fGqnxZQ
oldgold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There is a lot of distance between “super duper aggressive” and “cognitive decline.” And, the audience was not McConnell and Ryan, but the American public.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah, but the Democratic senators are surely notifying the authorities when they find them. The Republican senators are surely burning the documents in their respective fireplaces.
Sure Lurkalot
Thanks for taking the time to transcribe this explainer WG, and the furthers from the BJ commenters who apparently have to live by some of these rules.
Unfortunately, all this has done is further push me to the side that John Q Public, uninterested in nuance but captured by the both sides narrative shouted from the likes of the FTFNYT as well as other outlets, will not give much thought about intent, provenance, transparency.
JoyceH
Jeff Zientz to be new COS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/22/jeff-zients-biden-chief-of-staff/
The other day, the news had a list of potential COSs and it was a bunch of unfamiliar names and faces. It feels like the members of the Trump administration were more familiar to us because they were always generating negative headlines. With a good professional administration, only a handful of the main players made news. If you don’t recognize the cabinet secretaries and such, that’s good, IMO – just a bunch of unknowns, keeping off the news, getting the work done.
trollhattan
The Cool Senators Club sticks together.
My surprised face is at the cleaners.
Starfish
@Mike in NC: Wasn’t Jared rejected repeatedly?
Starfish
@Baud: You must be much nicer to a woman who would create short excerpts of podcasts, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing.
guachi
I had a TS/SCI clearance for 20 years. I think I still have it even though I’m retired from the Navy. Almost everything classified I ever looked at was digital on a computer. The idea of people having mounds of paper classified material is baffling.
Martin
Good news, everyone.
Abortion is now a wedge issue on the right. Democrats are near-unanimous in their position that it should be legal and are willing to say as much, while Republicans are divided between the radicals that want it completely banned and the pragmatists that know that is electoral suicide and in rejecting the one drop rule are trying to figure out what arbitrary middle ground they should stake out.
While many would say Dobbs moved the Overton window to the right, it actually moved it to the left because Democrats finally are showing a full-throated defense of abortion rights, while a lot of the folks who postured around a full ban and having to dial that way back now that such a bill can be passed. To his credit, this is what Graham was trying to prevent with his 18 week ban and failed. Polling on the issue shows support for legal in all instances is at a historical high, illegal in all instances is at a historical low.
This is one of the lessons about election polling. When you ask people about hypotheticals they can stake out positions that they would never support in an actual situation. Would I sacrifice my life for my wife? Of course! That’s a no-brainer. (Ms Martin coos from the other room because I’m so sweet) When faced with imminent death would I still do that? Who the fuck knows. I like to think I could do that to protect her but I have no idea. Ask me closer to the event when the consequences feel real, and I will give a different answer – at the very least it’ll be more tenuous and less movie hero sounding.
It was easy to be an abortion radical in Congress because nobody was asking you to vote. Now they are. The 2024 GOP primary is going to be really damn entertaining.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@guachi: I believe Andrew McCabe said last week on the podcast WaterGirl cites that when he (Deputy, and then Acting, Director of the FBI) was in meetings involving classified material, everybody had their own printed copy.
I’ve been assuming that many of these Biden dox were photocopies that probably, strictly speaking, shouldn’t have been made? and definitely should have been returned to… somebody, and/or destroyed?
trollhattan
Guess who wants his old job back?
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1617124358564241408?cxt=HHwWgIDT3aiCl_EsAAAA
If the opposition can’t pry the Tories from power, the UK will continue spiraling downward towards irrelevance. The latest on BoJo is he appointed Tim Davie director-general of the BBC after Tim Davie guaranteed a very large loan for BoJo.
Nothing to see here of course, no laws technically broken, now move along, move along.
delphinium
@trollhattan: Not sure how much Manchin’s support would help Sinema in her race as it would likely drive the more lefty/progressive Democrats even further away from her and it is unlikely that non-Trumpy Republicans or conservative Independents would cross over to vote for her because of this. Guess we will see in 2024.
trollhattan
That’s a lot of toilets to clog.
Mike in Pasadena
Our nuclear weapons documents had Top Secret, SCI, and NOFORN (short for no foreign), all of it in red bold face on their covers and on each page in fine print. Hard to miss those designations. We had codes and deciphering documents for our launch/no launch the airplane instructions because we received coded instructions via radio. All of these practices as I knew them are now 40 years out of date. A lot has changed, I’m sure. What hasn’t changed for military personnel I suspect, was how seriously we took the responsibility to safeguard all such materials.
Martin
It doesn’t even make sense. The whole point of the classified designation is to inform *other people* whether or not it should be looked at and how it should be handled. Only a narcissist would think it could work that way because it suggests the classification system exists solely to affect them, and nobody else.
trollhattan
@delphinium: My thoughts too, but for two attention-hoores this seems like a dance they’re happy to continue dancing.
With the slight vote shift in the senate, Joe and Kirsten don’t have the cameras pointed at them quite as often, which makes them sad.
Betty Cracker
This is good to know, but I think the comment it was meant to address is still valid in a lot of instances since only code word protected info is serialized and tracked. According to news reports, Trump had dozens of TS/SCI documents stashed at Disgraceland. CNN reports that Biden had at least one document classified at that level, maybe more — the report didn’t give numbers, just classification levels. If information is so sensitive it’s not supposed to leave a SCIF except when an authorized person takes it to another SCIF, that suggests to me that it should be serialized and tracked.
Geminid
I hadn’t heard about the Overton Window for a while. I thought maybe there was a recall.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
I had a TS clearance on the ship I worked on, for one compartment access – we had equipment in that compartment, which of course canceled the day my foot hit the pier the last time, approximately 2 yrs.
Geminid
@delphinium: I would not bet on it, but I don’t think Sinema will run next year.
Ruckus
@Baud:
He was not deeply broken in the government.
He was deeply broken decades before he ever set one crappy foot in the WH.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think the discrepancies between these accounts is easily explained. Guachi accessed all of his stuff on computer – probably because he was inside of the organization that maintained those documents. Having folks in the Navy have access to Navy systems is pretty straightforward. Same for people in the State Department, etc.
But Biden was never in any of these agencies. He was in Congress and then the WH. He’s not signing into dozens of different federal systems to access the range of information he needs. The way you resolve that is to print it.
And that’s also true for any leadership. Some of this is privilege, and some is practical, but the President isn’t going to read the PDB on a computer. They want to be able to read it at their desk, the sofa in the oval, sitting on the can, in the residence, on Marine One, and so on. And these are not low-level absorbing of information. In the process of reviewing this information, they’re going to take notes and draw out plans, and those are going to be classified. So you’re guaranteed to have classified paper to deal with because you’re going to generate it on the spot, so bringing in classified paper to that situation isn’t a big deal.
Some of it is that forcing other people to print out reports and do all of this handling reinforces your status. Ran into that quite a bit too.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Are you talking about TS/SCI documents?
It seems likely to me that anyone who is given access to TS/SCI documents in a meeting probably has an office that is already considered a SCIF.
But I obviously don’t know that for sure.
ian
@Geminid: It kept exploding every time it got pulled over to the side of the road.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: when I speculate about photocopies? no, and I don’t think McCabe was that specific about his meetings
I would think with SCIF level documents, the meetings would be small enough that any printed copies could and would be easily gathered up and destroyed. I haven’t heard that any of the documents found in Biden’s home or offices were that level. I can only recall one report that said one of the Biden documents had some higher level of classification, but I don’t recall what.
frosty
Thank you so much WaterGirl! I don’t do podcasts or video since they’re so damn slow. Give me something to read so I can get the info in a fraction of the time. And skip over some of it, too. This summary was great.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
What Andrew McCabe said is that at the level of, say mid-level person at the FBI with a clearance level of Top Secret – the documents have to be returned to the SCIF.
This is the part that would apply to the President, and others:
So having them at Disgraceland WHILE HE WAS PRESIDENT wouldn’t have broken the rules, as long as procedures are followed (related to the part I bolded above).
Irishweaver
I love that reaction!
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Nice that it may have moved the Overton Window. Not nice for every woman who no longer has control over her own body.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My point is that in meetings with SCIF level documents, I bet that every person attending those meetings has an office that is designated as a SCIF.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I initially misread your comment. I think!
Now I think you are saying that SCIF-level documents should also be serialized and tracked.
They addressed that on the podcast – the near-impossibility of serializing and tracking TS/SCI documents because there are millions and millions of them.
Which brings us back to the question of whether some/many/most Top Secret documents are over classified.
Baud
@Geminid:
Yeah, I thought that stupid concept was dead and buried.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Starfish’s comment has me concerned. I hoped my last joke didn’t insult you.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Thank you. All week it has seemed like at least half of the comments on BJ – related to the classified documents – were based on a lack of understanding of what is tracked and now.
So I figured it was my civic duty to share what I had learned on BJ.
And now I have it for reference. :-) I may add this post to the sidebar for easy reference.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Agree, but it’s apparently run on the honor system if there’s no tracking, so bad actors like Trump can steal stuff and documents can be misplaced through sloppy handling, which is what I suspect happened with the TS/SCI docs found on Biden’s properties. I don’t know what volume we’re talking about with TS/SCI information, but maybe it would be worthwhile to track stuff at that level.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Yes, people seem to keep imagining that there is a room that people go to to look at these documents and that access to that room is controlled. In actually, a SCIF could be an entire building that has controlled access. In that case, people could be wandering the halls with top secret data all the time.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Not at all! Do i wish that folks would take the 7 minutes to listen to the clip, yes?
Was I offended by your joke? Never! :-)
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I will listen to the 7-minute clip, for you.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I don’t do podcasts, but I did listen to your excerpt. It better not be a gateway drug.
guachi
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: i think that’s a big difference. We had direct access to the classified material in an entire massive building designed to house it (various NSA facilities). And we were the ones generating the content in the first place.
Occasionally printing a script for presentations to higher ups but that script went right into the burn bag when we were done with it.
Otherwise everything was done on computer.
guachi
I will add that it would have been incredibly easy to remove all sorts of classified documents by copy/pasting to Word, removing the headers, printing it, and walking out of the building.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I am honored!
No One You Know
@frosty: x2. Video is slow and noisy. Fast and silent is better, especially in public places.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: If it is, I can send you a photo for your dart board.
Did you think it was worth the 7 minutes, or not?
Omnes Omnibus
@guachi: Weren’t you in SIGINT or similar? Everything on computers makes complete sense there. Analyses and reports for end users are more likely to be on paper.
Leslie
Just popping in long enough to say THANK YOU to WG for this writeup. Now I’m off to see a cousin who’s come to visit before she and her husband emigrate to Portugal.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Well, my time is awfully valuable, so I am not a good test case.
WaterGirl
@frosty: @No One You Know:
That’s how much I love all you guys on Balloon Juice. For important information, you’ve gotta meet people where they are.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: What’s your billable rate for having to listen to audio? :-)
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: In my spare time? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
UncleEbeneezer
@WaterGirl: Thank you for transcribing this. I thought this part of the episode really helped me better understand the issues and I paraphrased/mentioned it in a comment in another thread, this (actual wording) is so much better. You rock!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: hahaha
BretH
I still fail to understand why, when those Republican congressman asshats barged into the scif, their security clearances weren’t instantly revoked pending whatever investigation was needed. You can draw a line from that mistake to them feeling empowered to do insurrection bs later.
lee
Here’s the one thing that I have not seen in these reports: They have not said precisely where they were found.
Where they found in an appropriate safe? Isn’t that one of the rules of this? You can take them somewhere but they have to be stored in an appropriate manner where ever they go. So in a random closet in Florida is not appropriate.
WaterGirl
@BretH: Bad acts with no consequences pretty much insures future bad acts.
WaterGirl
@lee:
That is not ours to know. Not now, anyway.
WaterGirl
I added a link under featuring in the sidebar in case this will be useful for reference in the coming weeks.
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: Thank you for providing this excellent primer WG!
narya
The other thing that discussion helped clarify for me is that, at his level, the documents followed HIM around–he wasn’t necessarily handling them directly except when looking at them. Which is not to say that he’s not responsible etc., but it is definitely a nuance that wouldn’t be obvious. It also helps me understand even better the concern on the part of DOJ to find evidence that TFG was actively using the things he had.
OT: Chicago peeps who listen to local radio may be joining me in mourning Your Best Friend in the Whole World . . . (DJ Lin Brehmer, a local legend and genuinely nice guy).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I am surprised by the inclusion of “at home” in these lists. I’ve held clearance, including at one point an SCI clearance, but I haven’t worked at these exalted levels so perhaps the rules are different.
In order to transport materials outside of the normal protected areas, you need a courier card. Courier cards for Secret material are fairly common. Even a weenie like me had one, but that was only because I had to transport materials from the safe to a conference room in the same building. A building that was permanently locked, had a guard at the front door, and was in the middle of a guarded military base.
I never had to take classified material into the wider world, but I was trained that if I ever did, it was my responsibility to get it to a secured facility. Not to your hotel room, and certainly not to your home. You land at your destination and you check it in to an approved facility where somebody can throw it into a safe.
And you damned well bet it was tracked.
And this is just the low-level classified stuff.
But this kind of handling was rarely needed anyway. Most of the time if you have to physically move Secret or Confidential materials, there are approved shipping methods.
You used the term “data spill” up top, WG. That’s exactly correct. Spills are a pain in the ass and will mean you will spend a lot of uncomfortable time talking to security folks who are going to have to confiscate things and do a damage assessment. I was the cause of one myself, an email which to my dying day I will swear was unclassified (and my boss backed me up on that) but which an “expert” decided was classified, and security deferred to the “expert”. My boss and I lost the use of our laptops for a week.
But nobody would seriously call a spill a crime. They happen, and there are administrative procedures to deal with them.
As to the question as to whether he could keep them at Merde-A-Lago, I suppose that would depend on whether there was a SCIF there. They can’t just be kept on the dining room table, even if you have all the clearances in the world. You have to be able to control who has access to them, who can see them. Some of this stuff, even the titles are classified.
Baud
I don’t know why they don’t use colored pages to print out classified documents so they’re easy to spot when misplaced.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Think of it like attorney work product. Sometimes it isn’t the individual documents but rather the compilation of them that makes it classified.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
That was the right thing to do, but did it have to be a Trump-approved right-winger?
Redshift
A couple of timing-related items have been in my mind lately.
First, (via Preet Bharara) on the issue of special counsels. At the point when Garland appointed the special counsel for TFG, the Biden incident had already been reported to archives, even though it wasn’t public, so he would have known about it. That makes the appointment of the first special counsel less mysterious.
Second, the Biden case became more serious politically when it was a “multi-day” news story. But that only happened because the leaker leaked it that way. Otherwise if we heard about it at all, it likely would have been one story after it was all over. That doesn’t prove that was done intentionally, but we all know the FBI and intelligence agencies are heavily Republican…
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
That’s where this comes into play for the heads of agencies, they VP, POTUS, etc.
If you listen to the podcast, Andrew McCabe makes the point that the special security folks are supposed to GIVE YOU THE DOCUMENTS WHEN YOU NEED THEM.
I don’t think Trump followed the rules of classified documents at all. So yeah, they probably were sitting on the dining table where he was eating his big macs.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: As for the term “spill”. When I heard that, I immediately thought of spilled milk. No one spills their milk on purpose, except for maybe passive-aggressive pricks.
So the assumption is “spill”, then they review and investigate and make a determination.
Biden clearly had no intent, which is why I’m sure (even though he hates that this is happening) he is not concerned about being prosecuted, because this is a guy who follows all the rules.
Spanky
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Right. Your home has to have a SCIF, like the White House or Naval Observatory VP residence. All else is bullshit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t have a timeline to hand, but as I recall the news about the documents at the Biden Center came first, the documents in the Wilmington garage were a few days later, then yesterday’s news about what the Feds found after Biden requested a full search of the (Wilmington?) house?
Spanky
@Baud: In my experience about 98% of docs in a SCIF are classified, so what’s the point? If they’re outside the SCIF they need to be under double wrap, or else someone is violating procedure. Which seems to be what has happened. A lot.
narya
@Redshift: An analysis by Pod Save America folks made it clearer how this might have happened–once the administration reported it, they decided to only speak to anything DOJ made public, as was proper, rather than going public themselves and possibly appearing to influence DOJ. Unfortunately, this put them behind the news, repeatedly. And, of course, as has been noted here, the reporting has been less than stellar.
WaterGirl
@James E Powell: I think Garland chose someone he believes will make a sound judgment, based on facts, so if it’s a Republican guy appointed by Trump, that would make the verdict more acceptable.
This, I think, is something that might have been true 10 or more years ago, but if Biden gets the nod that it’s not a crime, nothing from the new special counsel will make it okay for Trump to be prosecuted.
Everything is too polarized. Is Garland trusting the right guy? I have no idea.
I DO NOT LIKE that (on another Jack podcast) as McCabe pointed out. the new Special Counsel was the main guy at DOJ under Bill Barr who interfaced with the Mueller investigation on a day-to-day basis. Ugh.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
DOJ knew that Dearie would be a straight shooter, even though he was Trump’s pick for special master.
Another Scott
@Baud: There are “Cover Sheets” in various colors with lots of scary text about the rules and the law that are supposed to be used to cover classified information.
(Printing classified stuff on standard colored paper wouldn’t solve the problem (what about stuff that arrives in printed form from elsewhere?). The cover sheets are a good solution.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Sure Lurkalot
@JoyceH:
I thought I remembered reading a few things about Mr. Zientz that we’re not good and it may have been this.
https://prospect.org/power/corporate-past-of-jeffrey-zients/
OTOH, here is the garbage that is NPR:
Baud
I listened to the clip!
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
NYT worthy.
ETA: Journalism like that is why I gave up on the media.
Baud
Here’s a story for the media.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I know. We were burned when people said they thought Bill Barr would be a fine Attorney General. And all those Republican women vouched for the Rapist Beer-Drinking Supreme Court Justice.
To a certain extent, if your pedigree is good, there can be an assumption that someone is fine, and then they turn out not to be.
For instance, one of the people added to the “Jack” special counsel team by Jack Smith himself is a person who pursued the case against Andew McCabe and kept coming and coming even though they couldn’t show wrong-doing, until some judge finally said “enough!” put a stop to it
edit: None of these people ever call me for an opinion! :-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The administration was rocked by the revelation that Biden and his attorneys had invited the DoJ to search the house?
ETA: re-reading that sentence, I guess it was the weekend that was rocked, not the administration. Sources close to the weekend could not be reached for further comment.
There is a musical group or performer known as The Weekend that is popular with the young people, is there not ?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Go you! Was it worth the 7 minutes?
MattF
I had a TS/SCI clearance for many years. At some point, my office-mate and I decided to remove all classified documents from our office— the whole classification rigamarole had become too hard, and too risky, and there were people working in SCIFs whose job was to handle classified documents. I should note that my office-mate’s clearance was, effectively, higher than mine since his required a polygraph test. I went a step further and avoided knowing any safe combinations.
It should be noted that classification is a feature of inter-agency bureaucratic warfare. I once had a project killed off by a competing team because they persuaded a project manager to raise its classification to a level that my employer wasn’t willing to pay for.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
It was better than Cats!
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, he should be easy enough to track down and ask.
TheMarySue.com – Daniel Craig SNL Weeknd Meme.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: I haven’t been able to avoid knowing safe combinations or working in “closed areas”. These aren’t as classified as SCIFs, but are still behind a locked, alarmed door. And if you’re the last person out and the security guards find something improperly secured… well, let’s say it makes life unpleasant for a while.
(Parenthetical note, when proper procedures are followed there’s absolutely no question about who was the last one out and what materials were or were not potentially exposed if the room wasn’t secure. There’s a paper trail.)
That experience has given me a permanent OCD about checking whether the house doors are locked when I leave them. I know it’s irrational, I know I should focus and be conscious when I lock the door so I don’t get 50 yards away and then think, “Am I sure I locked them?” But I still find myself going back and re-checking them 2, 3, 4 times.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Who will be the first one to begin one of these articles with “It was a dark and stormy night….”?
narya
@WaterGirl: Yeah, both McCabe and Popehat noted Hur’s reputation and priors; they weren’t willing to come out and say that he would be Barr-bad, but they weren’t sanguine, either. The other thing that has been noted is that Jack was appointed AFTER the Biden docs were found.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: …I will see it again and again.
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
For some reason, my Google feed thinks I’m interested in stories about Home Depot. Two things.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I agree he is a dick, but I don’t understand why younger customers would be a particular group he’s alienating. Is it the 70’s music that we having in our store now(thank Gawd, it’s better than the other shit they were playing).?
Marc
When the last of my parents died 30 years ago, my sister and I were cleaning out the house so it could be sold. In boxes of my father’s stuff we found a few of folders of Classified documents from his days as a high level project manager in the defense industry during the 60s. All concerned the bombing/navigation radar for a strategic bomber that was later cancelled. The company he worked for had been merged into a giant defense conglomerate, we had no idea what else to do with them, so we ran them through the shredder and and went on with the cleaning.
Later on we found an article clipped from Outside magazine (later article here) describing a failed climbing expedition to place an RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) powered monitoring station high in the Himalayas to collect data from Chinese nuclear tests. They had to abandon the equipment due to bad weather. We’d heard the code name mentioned and the dates corresponded to a time when Dad suddenly disappeared for a few months while we were kids. Apparently he had to expedite construction of a replacement. Somewhere up in the Himalayas his plutonium powered station is still buried deep under the snow.
Brachiator
@Sure Lurkalot:
Non-issue evergreens.
mvr
@narya:
Damn. Grew up in Illinois but not Chicago. Listened to XRT when I was in range of the station and then regularly more than 20 yrs ago, driving to O’Hare when in town to take care of my mom w Alzheimer’s which was often. This was one of the last decent commercial radio stations of which I am aware. I remember Lin Brehmer from that. Also possibly he is the XRT DJ who once sat next to me on the way to NOLA for Jazz fest, though it was long ago and at the time I did not recognize him by name.
I still miss live radio. There’s just something about listening to something with other people even you don’t know them. Part of why I find it hard to listen to podcasts (to bring this around to another theme of the thread).
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
The headlines I’ve seen, he’s complaining about young people’s work ethic.
JPL
@Baud: The woke mob. It is beyond me how any Jewish person could support republicans, but they do
It’s doubtful that he knows what Woke is.
Baud
@JPL:
No one knows what Woke is. That’s the magic of Woke.
Geminid
@Baud: If it’s the person I’m thinking of, it’s been a while since that guy had a management role at Home Depot. He’s famous as one of the owners of Home Depot. Sports team owner Sid Blank was another.
Baud
@Geminid:
I didn’t make it past the headline, which made me think he was the current CEO. But headlines lie.
narya
@mvr: Yeah, they’re doing a tribute on air at 10 am tomorrow; they’re on Audacy if you want to try to find it. I met him a dozen times or so–I have a picture with him from an event in 2019 (I think) celebrating his 35 years on the air–and it was always fun to see him. I don’t know if you ever caught his Lin’s Bin feature–answers to listener questions, often interleaved with music–but he answered one of mine in 2017 or so. Various lawyers prevented them from being published, but they were lovely essays. Terri Hemmert announced it this morning during Breakfast w/ the Beatles, and she was barely holding it together.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Oh, THAT GUY, he is a former CEO and one of the founders. I think his only connection to the company now is being a major stock holder and all around douche. I will say that the younger associates do tend to have more attendance* issues than older associates and will be on their personal phone more as well, they old associates just engage in the old time honored water cooler chat.
*Being late, call outs, No Call No Show…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
these are some tax returns I’d like to see. 93 YO, billions of dollars, and he sits around bitching because people got two grand two years ago
phdesmond
@Baud:
what about Bawds’ Eyes?
image
WaterGirl
@Marc: That’s cool to find out that information about your dad, even after he is gone.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bernie’s comments were the source of several threads on the unofficial HD reddit* a week or so ago. His comments were not well received.
*On occasion we’ll get customers who show up there asking about a resolution to their issues; sometimes we’re nice and let them know that this is not a reddit associated with the company, other times we’ll tell them to get the fuck out of our break room.
Geminid
@Baud: Yeah, Bernie Marcus is often identified as Home Depot chief because he kept a higher profile than the other four men who founded the company.
The guy I was thinking about is not “Sid” but Arthur Blank. I think he owns the Atlanta Falcons now. Wikipedia tells me that Home Depot was started in Marietta, Georgia in 1978. That was a good place and time to start a company like that.
JPL
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I imagine that they were not well received in HD’s corporate offices either.
Arthur Blank is part of the group pledging to give away at least fifty percent of his income.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Corporate’s main goal is maximizing shareholder value, they just didn’t like him saying the quiet part out loud.
Mike in NC
So does someone like “George Santos” of Long Island automatically qualify for a security clearance even if nobody knows his real name or citizenship status? If so that is nuts.
raven
@Geminid: He’s owned the Falcons for 20 years.
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: My first thought was “surely not!”
However… Congressional staff clearances
Boy, a whole lot of our rules and customs need to change.
JPL
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Nardelli thought the same and during his time at HD, the stock didn’t perform.
Jay
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
that was always an issue at my store when I worked for the Apron, mostly because the DS’s, AssMen and MOD didn’t pass information on. The workaround us grunts came up for it was to log all calls or get our partners to log all calls with time, name and title of whom was informed, call the Desk, call the MOD and get another associate to Link message the DS and AssMan.
Then of course, the MOD, AssMen and DS’s would do nothing about arranging coverage.
It’s not a good place to work, unless you can engage in “quiet quitting” or “learned helplessness”.
Jay
@JPL:
a big chunk of the HD stock rise, is due to taking bailout money from all the bailouts, and spending it on stock buybacks.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL:
Nardelli was long before my time, but from what I’ve heard his time as CEO was the beginning of the decline in the company. As Kay would say, bad hire.
Frankensteinbeck
Trump conducted Presidential business that included national secrets all the time at Mar-A-Lago. He did it out in the open, in customer areas. We bitched – rightly – about it all the time, that he was disgustingly betraying our national security.
But we didn’t claim it was illegal. Just shitty because he was in a freaking consumer establishment club, conducting diplomatic discussions in a heavily populated dining area.
@Baud:
They know exactly what Woke is, and they hate even the slightest traces of it and try to stamp it out.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay: You cannot call your DH(aka DS) to call out, you must speak with the MOD or another ASM. My recently departed co-worker wasn’t in, ASM asked me where he was, told him he left word in out group chat that he’d be out, ASM(also the MOD) said he must call him to let him know so it wouldn’t be a NCNS. Now this ASM is a good guy, he wasn’t just trying to an ass about it.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Here’s a third reason to hate Home Depot. For the second time in 2 years, my credit score has dropped solely because Home Depot has cut my credit limit in half simply because I don’t use it anymore. And the reason I don’t use it anymore is because I sold my fucking house 2 years ago! This, btw, was after they “rewarded” me 5 years ago by raising my limit to $9k without me even asking only to unilaterally cut it down to $4500 last year and to $2500 last month! Fuckers!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay:
I’m an OFA, I do my pulls and get the deliveries ready. If they’re not ready, I stay until they are ready. That’s the expectation. If a customer wants a personal shopper and wants an informed opinion, I’m the wrong person, and I will tell them that.
Usually, “Ah shucks, I’m a delivery guy”.
J R in WV
@oldgold:
Regarding “the formerly sainted Mueller” — I was amazed and saddened by his testimony before Congress. He appeared to be deep into early stage dementia, unfamiliar with his own report, only able to respond to questions by looking up what the report said about the topic of the question and reading something, haltingly.
Should not have accepted the appointment. No longer capable of doing the job. No wonder he hasn’t appeared anywhere being interviewed, he is no longer capable of answering simple questions.
This is not the case for AG Garland or the guys he has appointed as special counsels, as far as we can tell from out here.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
Bullshit. Everyone knows exactly what Woke is. Lee Atwater (may he roast in hell) explained it years ago. It’s just the latest code word the Right uses instead of screaming “N****r, n*****r, n****r!” which is what every one of them wants to yell at the top of their lungs.
Wapiti
@Baud: My older brother ran a hardware store in the SF Bay Area. He made a point of hiring bilingual cashiers, having Mexican coke near the checkout, things like that. He figured a big chunk of his business was laborers picking something up for a job site and he wanted them to have every reason to come to his store rather than Lowes or Home Despot.
tybee
@WaterGirl:
LOL – assuming you reference the book. :)
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Buffalo Bills are being rocked this weekend by Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bangels.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@Wapiti: But how will they ever assimilate if they don’t drink Mountain Dew??
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Buffalo Bills are being rocked this weekend by Joe Barrel and the Bangles
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Wapiti: When HD started, they would market themselves as a place where you could go and get advice on your project, they still do; however they also used to hire folk that worked in the trades and had retired, most of the folk they hire now are not those folk, just retail workers. Any training is watching videos instructing you to read the packaging to the customer.
You might get lucky and get someone who actually knows something, or you might get me, the delivery guy that is puling product from that department for a customer order.
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: Woke covers lot more than that now.
Woke is whatever they want it to be, anything they don’t approve of.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
Actually, dollar bills have serial numbers on them. People can be prosecuted based on those numbers — although higher denominations would be more common in court.
raven
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: There was a woman at our local HD that knew everything about faucets, cartridges and everything plumbing. I haven’t seen her in years.
Another Scott
@J R in WV: I may be in the minority here, but I think Mueller did fine, in the investigation, in the report, and in his testimony before Congress. Barr and Rosenstein are the villains in this piece.
The Oath with Chuck Rosenberg – Mueller – Part II (from February 2021):
Listen for a few minutes. Though Rosenberg talks a lot, Muller does too and he doesn’t sound like he has any dementia issues to me (2 years after his congressional testimony).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@J R in WV: Abdul Mustafa Mustafa was a mathematician at the U of I and he could play a mean game of liars poker. Fortunately I never understood it so I didn’t get fleeced!
Another Scott
@J R in WV: Of course, dollars are only printed in 2 locations on the entire planet. Classified document can be created anywhere.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ella in New Mexico
@trollhattan:
This BBC? Hmmmm
Geminid
@WaterGirl: The reason Republicans use “woke” so much is that it comes from Black American vernacular and sounds like it. It even sounds like “Black.” So they think it’s the perfect dogwhistle.
I don’t think anyone but Republicans have unironically used this word for a couple years now.
prostratedragon
@Another Scott:
With you on all three. I think that his determination to stay in his lane could make him seem rather laconic.
Bill Arnold
@oldgold:
A. Mitchell Palmer was 46 years old when he became USAG in 1919. Was he your kind of guy?
(Did not know that he was a Quaker, at least by upbringing. Sigh.)
Jay
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
The reason for calling the DS, or messaging them, is because 90% of the time the AssMan or MOD does not pass the information on or arrange coverage. So you get marked up as a no show, no call, then have to fight it through HR when you “find out” at your “review”. I had many a 16 hour day and quite often only eventually got coverage, after initiating a welfare check through Shawn, ( one of the few good AssMen), who would then try to arrange coverage.
I have a ESB suit against the Store, not because they fired me, but because they “dirtied up” my employment records, with forged documents, which they provided to EI and the ESB. (eg. Marcus left Depot in Jan. 2020, so he couldn’t have held a “disiplinary review” with me in June, 2020, on a day I wasn’t working.
“Not My Job” is considered to be a form of “Quiet Quitting”, and for some jobs at least at Orange Canada, aside from some Mgmt/Admin tasks, there is no such thing as “not my job”.
As an example, at my store, if you couldn’t make a scheduled shift, ( even if it was a scheduling mistake, ie, a day/time/shift you had flagged that you could not work in the system, like a Sabbath or a shift time before transit, etc), you had to arrange coverage from a fellow Associate in the Department, or have it raise on a “review”.
We, the Associates, found that you had to “embed” redundancy. It wasn’t enough to embed in the HR System that you couldn’t work the open on a Sunday, because the shift starts at 6am, but transit starts at 7am, you had to explain that to HR, the Manager, the MOD’s, the AssMen and the DS’s, then every 2 or 3 months, have the conversations again, because anytime they was a “hole” at 6am on a Sunday, they would schedule you in.
Anyhow, I work at a much better place now, for more money and more respect.
Brachiator
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Interesting how they downgraded one of the things that made them stand out from other stores. It’s like a restaurant famous for farm fresh products deciding to use a lot of frozen foodstuffs.
Jay
@raven:
she probably quit over “plastic”. Karen quit Plumbing and switched to MET, (stocking and display) over “plastic”.
Old guy screaming about “plastic” while she was up on a ladder trying to restock. Finally got enough words other than “plastic” out of him to figure out:
his wife was tired of him peeing on the floor infront of the toilet,
he was looking for a disposable plastic product to “solve” the problem rather than learn how to lift the toilet seat and sit down.
54 minutes of her life gone.
Burnspbesq
@oldgold:
May I remind you that because DOJ takes its responsibilities under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure very seriously, you don’t know Jack shit about the status of any ongoing investigation? And may I further remind you that that’s as it should be?
Elizabelle
@ WaterGirl: Your summary looks really helpful. Thanks. Not a podcast person, but might give Jack a try ….
Burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
If you have to ask, you can’t afford him.
Jay
@Brachiator:
in 2008, they cut all the former Red Seal employee’s they could to lower wage costs. In Canada they slashed staff and sent the money south to keep stores open. Then, when Covid hit, a lot of the “old” crew took the initial medical leave, (48 days) and never came back. Now, (in Canada) they rely largely on part time, (20hrs a month) foreign students, most of whom have never held a tool in their lives.
Bill Arnold
@Redshift:
Yeah. The most interesting part of the story is that there was a leak in the Biden case, but the Trump case blew into public awareness when there was a premises search done under a warrant, because a clear case had been made to a judge that classified documents were being hidden on those premises.
Until a leaker is properly identified in the Biden case, the (rest of the) press is doing the bidding of/are the puppets of whoever leaked.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
So far I’m winning this weekend’s football pool. Now it’s on to Dallas and lets win there.
oldgold
@Burnspbesq: Yes, you may remind me. But, it is the same crap I heard when I was complaining about Mueller.
Burnspbesq
@oldgold:
The fact that you would refer to it as “crap” tells me everything I need to know about you.
oldgold
@Bill Arnold: Well, damn, you got me there.
Seriously, what is your point? Yes, Palmer was not old. But, he also had not spent a quarter century marinating on the bench.
oldgold
@Burnspbesq: You prefer “jack shit” over “crap?”
prostratedragon
@Bill Arnold: Do I understand correctly that there was no obligation of either Biden or DOJ to announce the discoveries initially? I can imagine that without making an investigation there’s little to report, and a preliminary investigation would normally not be disclosed. As Bill Arnold points out, it was the search warrant, whose issuance is a public action of a court, that told us all about TFG.
catclub
@Feathers:
I thought that even if there are no tracking numbers or serialization for many documents, there are custodians identified for documents. Those custodians should be tracking the documents they have custody over.
WaterGirl
@Burnspbesq: Ha!
See Omnes at #101. Do they teach you guys that in law school? :-)
That must be like the “fuck you, pay me” thing for graphic designers.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon:
Correct. The DOJ opens zillions of investigations without announcing them. It’s more unusual if they do announce one.
WaterGirl
@catclub:
Yes, if they aren’t tracking them, they should be!
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It’s a glamorous life.
Frankensteinbeck
@oldgold:
…no? It was congress and the DoJ and whether the public ever heard anything was incidental? Mueller wasn’t a PR guy, wasn’t hired to be a PR guy, and wasn’t supposed to be a PR guy. He did his job. He gathered lots of info about Trump’s connections to Russia, and gave it to congress to do their job. I knew then that he would only prosecute Trump if that was procedure, which it wasn’t. The report was damning. Republicans didn’t care, Barr lied about it, the report was available to prove Barr lied, and the national press couldn’t be bothered to read it and went OH WELL I GUESS TRUMP IS INNOCENT NEXT SCANDAL.
I’m sorry that the actual system doesn’t live up to your superhero fantasies, but you can’t just throw people in jail who can afford any kind of real defense*. Trump tried and the DoJ lawyers shrugged at him. I never thought Mueller would save us. Jack will probably nail Trump on the documents because it’s so cut-and-dried, but he’ll do it at a pace he thinks makes a sure kill. That won’t save us either. Only the voters can do that.
*A disgusting but, alas, real qualifier.
mvr
@narya: Thanks for the followup information. This getting old sucks with losing people one admires/likes. But I guess that this has been going on our whole lives.
Nice you had some contact with him!
oldgold
@Frankensteinbeck:
Mueller was a disaster.
For instance, he failed to depose Trump! Rather, he relied on interrogatories. Really?!? Month after month he ceded damn near all communications concerning the investigation to Trump. Then, he turns the report over to Barr. When Barr butchered it, he remained essentially mute. Finally, he appeared before Congress – an unmitigated disaster.
livewyre
@Frankensteinbeck: You’ve nailed it. Anyone pushing a line about how bad or weak or old or sleepy the public figures are, rather than the necessity of the process and the importance of adhering to it, is at best entertaining themselves. That’s not what law is about, and that’s where it stops being about law and starts being about something else.
oldgold
@livewyre: Why does it have to be one or the other? You can champion process, while complaining the individual in charge of the process was experiencing significant cognitive decline.
phein63
A brief caveat:
You have to have annual refresher training if you work for a military organization where anyone, including someone else, may have access to classified documents. And god forbid anyone in your org screws up, because then everyone has to take in person and on-line training for at least one year.
I’ve taken IA (Information Assurance) on-line training every year for the last, I don’t know, 33 years?, and not only do I not traffic in classified information, everything I work with or publish is cleared for distribution to the public. Heck, we would be thrilled if someone wanted to spread our work products to the public at large.
[At one time, I did have a Secret clearance because I was detailed to an office in the Army Secretariat, but the only thing “classified” was budget data. My current co-workers deal with information that may be classified, and we do have a SCIF in our complex, but 99% of the workers at our location never deal with anything more sensitive than PII (personally identifiable information).]
Just saying, there is a lot more training and awareness than you might think. Is it all justified or effective? Who knows.
Redshift
@Bill Arnold:
Worse than that – it blew into public awareness because TFG posted publicly to whine about the search. The FBI went to great lengths to keep the search from being public, even having agents dressed in polos and khakis to blend in with the guests and not be obvious to casual observers.
Albatrossity
Thanks for this.
Re “won’t listen to podcasts”, here’s my view. I have listened to them, and re-discovered what I already knew. I am terrible at auditory learning. If I can read it, I will retain it. If I have to listen to it and sort through the chaff to get to what I need to retain, I will almost always zone out before I learn anything.
Folks have different ways of learning. Podcasts are great for auditory learners. They are not so great for those of us who don’t learn that way, and who may be too old to learn new tricks.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
I thought the Crackhead Barrel discussion was two weeks ago?
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@oldgold: And being wrong.