Posted on 12/09/2016 11:49:08 PM PST by eastforker
Does the President have access to all classified info ? Does anyone here even know??
Just wondering if anyone has access to all classified information.
Two words Mr President: Plausible Deniability
They ALL look like that after their first briefing.
And I am sure there are black ops going on to achieve “known” results, but they are kept secret so there is deniability.
Doesn’t Hillary have all of the FBI files?
I do. Want do you want to know?
Probably not.It has been hinted in the past that the CIA and other agencies don’t tell the president some things.
That’s the thing.
Obama too. But I do wonder if that scene from “Independence Day” where the Pres is told he hasn’t been briefed on everything, is accurate.
“
Your statement has a bunch of underlying assumptions that are worth a second look.”
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
On top of that for decades the CIA and FBI were not allowed to share intelligence. A former CIA agent who had transferred to the FBI had full information on the task he was assigned to investigate but was unable to share it or even tell them the information they were seeking was already available. Ridiculousness cubed.
I bet it was just the opposite with O. That Obama didn’t learn much at all because he thought he knew it all.
Since moving to New Mexico I have been exposed to more “if I told you I’d have to kill you” people than I ever even knew existed.
One of those people would occasionally tell me funny stories about now declassified programs, like the atomic airplane, and just how screwed up these projects can be.
This person had actually briefed the president on several different occasions, which led me to ask the same question you did, “is the President privy to all classified material?”
“Oh, hell no.”
“Who decides what he gets told?”
“He is told what he needs to know when he needs to know it.”
“What if he asks about a classified program?”
“He is told as little as possible.”
“Do they lie to the President?”
“Lie?” He smiled. “We might withhold, but we don’t lie.”
Stop nitpicking! By focusing on that (the name of the project), you are evading the overarching question.
Okay, then the President says, "In the context of a different project for which you have no clearance - so I can't even mention its name to you, Mr. Disclosure Officer - I need you to give me this info."
Are you saying that the Disclosure Officer would be justified in demanding that the President explain why he needs it? What if the President then simply replied, "I'm sorry, you don't have the necessary clearance for me to explain to you why I need this info."?
In my mind, the President should have the highest possible clearance. Doesn't mean that he should be proactively informed about things about which he has not asked - just that no one should be able to deny him requested info (maybe after a brief disclaimer, like: "I will tell you - but are you sure that you want to be told? This concerns very sensitive info that you may have difficulty keeping under your hat.")
Regards,
““He is told as little as possible.””
I worked on a couple of civilian classified projects for government customers. The people on the program wanted to say as little as possible. I think there were several reasons. The less they said, to anybody, about anything, the less risk they were taking. This led to a high divorce rate, at 100% at the time I was on those projects. The don’t talk attitude drifted into their personal lives.
Another reason is, knowledge I have but you don’t makes me (better? more important? superior?) to you. Therefore, they default to not telling but, I think, feeling secretly superior as you go off and do something useless based on your flawed understanding and they do nothing to stop you. I imagine if you know stuff the President doesn’t know you are really, really superior.
There are lots of flaws in the system. However we can be assured that the flaws in our enemy’s systems are just as great and perhaps greater. Our culture is much more open and inclusive than that of any of our potential adversaries.
Whether it works comes down to individual personalities. As far as decision-making, I’d stack the average American soldier against the average Russian or Chinese soldiers any day.
See Executive Orders 12968 and 13467.
You have had no or very limited exposure to this sort of intense compartmentalization or you would understand and not make the arguments you make - they might make sense in your mind but that is as far as it goes.
You may or may not recall when the US sunk the Israeli Intel ship. It was called a mistake. But it was not. The NYT, which was more honest in those days, printed the entire story. However, we marked it Top Secret CW. That did not make sense either, but it is a true story. Sense and classification are not always in sync or compatible, but that deficiency does not change the reality.
If you have or if the President has "difficulty keeping" Intel "under his hat" then you/he has no business knowing and are/is a security risk.
Your example fails as the "disclosure officer" would have to be excused before the topic was brought up and some other officer (cleared) brought in - a case which is extremely unlikely as the first officer (uncleared) could not even know of the project's existence in the first place. To reveal its existence/anything is a breach.
It was my experience that no matter how high one's clearance was, someone always had a higher one - but who that was unknown as that would have been a breach. While the President theoretically has the highest clearance, it may not always be so in practice - as someone here said, what he's told is almost always a summary and summaries (while very good) do not necessarily reflect the actualities since they are done to convey a particular point. The point may have one classification the President (cleared), while Method and Means (uncleared) has another which is not disclosed because he has no need to know to make any decisions flowing from that knowledge.
No one knows everything. And if someone did, his head would explode under mass of data. The President's job here is to make the best decision possible with the Intel given, not to know everything which is pointless.
the President has, theoretically, access to all classified information, however, as Mark, JPX and Poinq have inferred: “Does he need to see/know everything?” the bottomline question here is: Does one want the President to be an intelligence analyst, getting more raw data than any single person could review and think about everyday? Or ‘do you want the president to be the leader of the country or just its “only” intel analyst?
The Army, during the civil war, developed an intelligence analytical system and the pre-cursor to today’s G-2 system because the amount of information coming in began to overwhelm commanders, who had previously acted as their own ‘chief of intelligence’ as well as leading the Army and fighting the battles.
General McClellan is the best example of this. All of the scouting reports came directly to him and he had to read and analyze them while talking with his subordinates and planning/fighting General Lee. It is perhaps, this getting lost in the weeds, that was a possible source of his “slowness” and fearing that Lee always had more men than him.
Historian Peter Tsouras touches on this problem in his: https://www.amazon.com/Scouting-Grant-Meade-Reminiscences-Potomac/dp/1628736984/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&qid=1481386679&sr=8-35&keywords=peter+tsouras
There is no one who has access to all of it, at least not without extensive contrivance.
Also, if one remembers, Bill Clinton had his security clearance suspended for about a month due to his leaking.
There is no one who has access to all of it, at least not without extensive contrivance.
Also, if one remembers, Bill Clinton had his security clearance suspended for about a month while he was President, due to his leaking.
I think that it is grossly unfair of you to sweepingly dismiss and/or attempt to disqualify me or anyone else here on this forum who has a rational opinion to offer and a logical argument to back it up.
This was posted in the "General/Chat" forum, so it is ridiculous to "pull rank" on anyone offering their measured opinion.
It is so easy for someone to pop up and claim "special expertise" and then go on to deny anyone else an opinion.
I think that it was obvious that the original poster posed a loosely-worded question (to which there could be no precise answer) and was merely looking to start a general discussion / bull session.
I think that it goes without saying that 99.9% of all FReepers have had no experience with high-level security clearances and are thus unable to provide definitive answers.
Regards,
I have lots of experience - which would have been obvious had you read what I took a lot of time trying to explain, but at which I apparently failed to explain adequately to you. Opinions, rationality, and logic have absolutely nothing to with the classified world - fine if you hold them, just do not expect them to be taken seriously or used.
I was not trying to deny you an opinion, just point out that realistically it is of no valve unless you are making national policy regarding classified information.
There are far more Freepers with exposure to the classified world than you think - more in the area of 25-50%.
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