As I noted earlier President Trump needs to change that if he wants to gain control over government operations.
“...President Trump needs to change that...”
Security on a SCIF is an excellent action. It clears some of the fishing going on in secure areas and limits the people coming and going. These comparmental storage locations are more than people realize. And even the archives have limitations. If there is a need to see something, then get the clearance and the proof of need. It really isn’t that hard if it’s done right and is legit.
I read a statement from a long time SCIF level person saying what and why and I worked under the same thought process:
Does the president of the USA have the clearance to see all classified documents?
By definition he is allowed to see anything he wants. No arguments. He does not actually undergo a clearance process and is not formally issued a clearance. But as Commander In Chief and head of the Executive Branch he can see anything he wants to. He has limited abilities to declassify however.
He is listed in the the Executive order on classification as a classification authority Notably he is NOT listed as a declassification authority. Some types of material can only be declassified as specified in the laws. And in 2018 (remind me who was President then?) a case won by the Department of Justice rebutted the theory that presidents have near-omnipotent declassification powers.
In July 2020, a case in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the DOJ stated flatly that “declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures.” CASE 18-2112-cv The New York Times, Matthew Rosenberg, v. Central Intelligence Agency (“Declassification cannot occur unless designated officials follow specified procedures, Executive order 13,526 established the detailed process through which secret information can be appropriately declassified.”)
And since we are talking about Trump… I spent my entire time in the Air Force dealing with highly classified materials including SCI materials.
SCI materials are compartmentalized as to the source of the intelligence information in them. And that’s what they are — intelligence information. Each source has a codename that is itself classified.
Let me offer an example. During WW2 we broke the Japanese Naval Code Purple. Whenever we decrypted a message that had been sent using that system each document was stamped TOP SECRET – MAGIC to tell people reading it where it came from without saying “This is from the Japanese Purple Code”. You had to be “read in” to the MAGIC program to even see the name MAGIC.
Many commanders got specially sanitized intelligence that didn’t say how it was obtained, they would not know we had broken the codes, only that it came from a highly reliable source.
But if the Japanese had seen ONE SINGLE MAGIC MESSAGE they would have instantly realized their codes were broken and would change them, depriving us of intelligence that allowed us to fight and win, and costing many service members their lives.”
So you can see, it is not a cut and dry scenario and the article implies somewhat out of the box ideologies. And to be honest, this is a simplified presentation. There’s a lot more.
wy69