Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

Not all heroes wear capes.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

After roe, women are no longer free.

We still have time to mess this up!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

In my day, never was longer.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The willow is too close to the house.

T R E 4 5 O N

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

No one could have predicted…

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / Politics / National Security / Monday Evening Open Thread: Enough With the F*cking Secret Memos Already

Monday Evening Open Thread: Enough With the F*cking Secret Memos Already

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The media’s already bored with the existing revelations, but I have a feeling there will be more surprises as the (sigh) 2024 primaries heat up. Justin Ellis, at Defector:

We are a petty and venal and lazy species on balance, and there is no distance the human mind can’t quickly traverse to convince itself that something you want won’t be missed. In this calculus, the most important factor is opportunity, and what better window is there than when you leave your job?

There is, of course, some difference between letting a pair of Skechers fall in your lap on the way out the door from Foot Locker, and, say, snagging that memo listing Kim Jong-un’s favorite episodes of Rick and Morty after you’ve run out the clock on your time in the Oval Office.

With the revelation that Joe Biden, as well as Donald Trump, had classified documents stuffed away in their homes, the keepers of the nation’s collective memory are growing worried that former presidents are hoarding stacks of sensitive files in their mud rooms or junk drawers…

The whole mess was made worse this week when Mike Pence signaled that he, too, had “inadvertently boxed and transported” classified papers back to his suburban manse in Indiana. Now everybody that held office as far back as the Reagan administration is on notice. (Jimmy Carter is exempt from tearing up his attic; the Presidential Records Act went into effect after he left office.)…

Context matters here. Trump used the Secret Service to rack up tabs at his namesake hotels. He is also the man whose protracted tantrum after losing the election gave way to an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Whether Trump was looking to use the files to cut deals with dictators or create a shadow box, he filled his suitcase with state secrets, however important or banal they might be, while displaying the same level of forethought generally associated with stealing a commemorative mug from Hooters. This is typically dumb, and potentially dangerous, but it is also another signal that the many veils of security clearance placed around aspects of doing the public’s business have gotten way out of hand…

Typically it takes an Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning to remind the public of the sinister campaigns that the government conducts behind the classified lines of a memo. But beyond special favors to allies, the usual greed mongering, and ill-conceived foreign combat fantasies, the government puts entirely too much shit in the Top Secret bucket. As Elizabeth Goitein, who studied national security at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, told NBC News: “You have 50 million classification decisions each year—90 percent of which are probably unnecessary. That’s a lot of rules that have to be complied with every hour of every day. And some of that is going to slip.”

Enough with the fucking memos already.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  2. 2.

    Lapassionara

    Just because a document is classified doesn’t mean that is Top Secret. Someone more knowledgeable than me listed the classification categories on a thread last week, I think, and there are a bunch. In all the reporting about Biden and Pence, I have heard nothing to suggest that the docs they had were marked Top Secret. Have I missed something?

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    @Lapassionara:

    CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS & CLASSIFICATION LEVELS 

    After a background check, you can get clearance at one of the three levels:

    1. Confidential
    2. Secret
    3. 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)

    • 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.
  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: I disagree with the premise that Pence finding and announcing that he had found some classified documents MADE THINGS WORSE.

    I think that made it a lot better. This great cartoon that Anne Laure put up recently shows why.

    Thursday Morning Open Thread: {{{{[CLASSIFIED]}}}}

  6. 6.

    Baud

    the government puts entirely too much shit in the Top Secret bucket. As Elizabeth Goitein, who studied national security at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, told NBC News: “You have 50 million classification decisions each year—90 percent of which are probably unnecessary.

    He seems to be confusing Top Secret with all classification levels.

  9. 9.

    bbleh

    @MattF: indeed IIRC having code-word clearance is (at least sometimes) itself a classified fact.

    As to overclassification, quite apart from the convenience of using it to restrict access to information that is potentially politically embarrassing but not necessarily to which national security is sensitive — which is by no means an insignificant factor — there sometimes is a bit of a power trip at work.  It flatters one’s ego to declare some bit of information under one’s control classified.

  13. 13.

    RSA

    “You have 50 million classification decisions each year—90 percent of which are probably unnecessary. That’s a lot of rules that have to be complied with every hour of every day.”

    For additional context, in the Department of Defense (I don’t know how it works elsewhere) there is a role called Original Classification Authority.  That’s not an organizational unit but instead a single person.  OCAs are the only ones who can mark something classified.  A quick Google search didn’t turn up how many OCAs there are; maybe that tidbit is classified as well.

    If there are 50 million classification decisions made every year, they’re made by thousands if not tens of thousands of people following whatever rules apply to their domain.  (I’m guessing that documents describing weapons technology are very different from documents analyzing foreign political movements, for example.)  I agree we should classify less, but it will be an enormous endeavor to develop and implement new policies.

  16. 16.

    Hoodie

    @Baud: When I got my first job as an engineer for a defense contractor, it took 6 months to get a Secret clearance.  When I needed it for a particular program, it took another 3 months to get a Top Secret clearance.  We were constantly told that foreign agents (Chinese, Russian, Israeli, etc.) conducted frequent surveillance on our facilities and employees.

    Trump supposedly had a bunch of Top Secret compartmentalized info, which can be really sensitive even if doesn’t appear so at first glance.   When I worked in defense, it was often hard to understand why certain information was considered top secret, but usually it had to do with interoperation with other information and what clues it provided regarding sensitive operations. For example, some of the information I encountered had to do with information that might be useful for countermeasures against US weapons systems.

    I’ve heard that the Biden and Pence stuff was mostly or all “Secret”, which is stuff that isn’t necessarily all that sensitive, or may not be all that sensitive after a relatively short amount of time has passed and it becomes public. Stuff like Obama’s or Trump’s schedule or the bullet points for a meeting.

    That article has a oversimplified bullshit quality to it, the Snowden ref is a tell.   This guy probably has no experience in DoD or other agencies that deal in classified docs and probably doesn’t understand (or just doesn’t care) why stuff gets classified .   While there may be too much stuff classified, seems that the bigger problem is that stuff does not get tracked very well and declassified on a regular basis.  That’s a huge job, however, given the amount of stuff the federal government generates.

  19. 19.

    schrodingers_cat

    Since this is an open thread many commenters in the morning thread, said that they too were concerned about India and they didn’t know enough to comment about it. If you have any questions I will try to answer them either on Twitter or on my blog. You can email me at my bloggy email or DM me on Twitter, identify yourself by your Balloon Juice nym.

    Some background for those who have no idea what I am talking about.

    It is the 75th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination and BJP’s biggest hero from the freedom struggle era is the man who was the mastermind of the assassination plot.

    Link to my Twitter thread for those interested

    ETA: We could rewatch Gandhi and I can do Twitter Space on it. It gives a good overview of the freedom struggle from the 1920s (Gandhi era) up to 1948

    ETA2: BJP’s fake news factories are gearing up to mess with our elections also they haven’t had much success in making a dent in the Indian-American support for Dems. But it is not for the lack of trying.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    @Hoodie:

    While there may be too much stuff classified, seems that the bigger problem is that stuff does not get tracked very well and declassified on a regular basis.

     
    Those things are probably interrelated.

  23. 23.

    Dangerman

    The librarian cartoon is dead on except for one thing; back in the day, there was a custodial authority on classified documents. You checked out and you checked in.

    If I had left a TS lying about, that authority would have hunted me down and made my life a living hell; if I made a habit of it, I would have lost my job and, if it was intentional, I’d get the Christopher Boyce suite at Lompoc. Who is the authority not doing their jobs here?

  28. 28.

    schrodingers_cat

    @sab: Really? I have seen the data since Obama’s first election. Over 70% of the Indian American vote was for the D candidate for President.  Before that the # of Indian Americans has been too small to be statistically significant. If you have data that proves otherwise I would be glad to see it. I will search for the said data myself.

  29. 29.

    RobertS

    My god, the stupid just burns.

    Classified info goes into special folders and gets covered with stamps.     There are rules on how it gets handled.    This column is just dressed up “savvy” whataboutism.

    That’s also leaving out National Defense Information (NDI), or put more succinctly, atomic secrets.   Trump had those at Mar-a-lago.

  31. 31.

    Tony Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Pffft. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or we duel at dawn under the elderberries.

    Actually, I don’t know, you could be right. I haven’t seen it since DVDs were a thing. Maybe I’ll watch it again this weekend.

    Can we all at least agree that Brendan Fraser would have made a great Superman? Really could have brought that ‘Aw shucks’ hometown boy thing to the role.

  34. 34.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Princess: and threaded comments!!!

     

    ETA: hat trick!  And the demise of my New Year’s resolution not to post after opening a bottle of wine….

  35. 35.

    Ruckus

    @Hoodie:

    There are also access clearances and I understand they are the same levels or at least used to be when I was given mine. My work department onboard ship had equipment in every compartment that normally had humans in it, so any restricted compartment that required entry for repair or replacement of equipment assigned to my department required a TS clearance, which is why I had one. They told me about 2 weeks after I reported on board that I had clearance. I had to ask why as I’d never been told anything about any clearance prior or that it was being requested of whomever gave them out.

  37. 37.

    schrodingers_cat

    @sab: What you said, I think this is true about Asians in general but not true of Asians from the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, SriLanka and Nepal)

    This is anecdata but Bill Clinton and HRC were both  hugely popular among most of my Indian-American acquaintances. And I have yet to meet an Indian-American Republican (30% of us do vote R, that’s a pretty significant number) in the flesh.

  41. 41.

    Origuy

    @schrodingers_cat: I’m in CA-17, represented by Ro Khanna. His Republican opponent in the last two elections was Ritesh Tandon, who immigrated from India when he was 28. I don’t think Tandon is particularly MAGA, he struck me more as a moderate technocrat who could have run as a Democrat in Texas. In San Jose, though, he didn’t stand a chance.

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