“Read the whole thing and look upon the face of a traitor. I know that the US needs military bodies, but I bet I could have figured out he was a traitorous leftie in five minutes of questioning.”
How did a 22 year old ‘anaylst’ get his hands on classified State Department documents?
We’re being led by the nose.
While I do think there is merit in your analysis that we may be “led by the nose”, one only needs to look at how intelligence has changed over the years.
There was once upon a time when the only way to get access to sensitive documents was via physical examination. In those cases, there were strict rules and regulations on how that documentation was handled. Things had to be checked in and checked out, records were kept, and even with huge bureaucracies, people often knew that access could be traced back.
Over the years, look at how material is stored. Much of it is in electronic form in computer systems with passwords that have auditing capability and so on. But, the knowledge needed to maintain those systems and the auditing software and the dictionaries that drive it is often highly specialized. People inhabiting the upper levels of the security agencies are probably more bureaucratic than technocratic, and are likely to leave security mechanisms in the hands of those below them. Somebody has to hold the keys… in these huge systems that are so interconnected with so much data with thousands or tens of thousands of people who have access to them, I would not be surprised at all to know that there are a lot of people with access to information who have no business having it.
Additionally, I am willing to bet that the screening processes for security clearance are, in most cases, complete and utter shams. There was once upon a time when there was no chance that a known homosexual would gain access to sensitive, classified material, simply because they were regarded as a known security risk. In the same light, a known drug user would’ve been in the same boat.
But we all know, and I think everybody knows that the penalties for lying or deception are completely toothless and are probably never enforced. Background checks? I would be willing to bet that true, in-depth background checks that really dig into a person’s past the way they used to are nonexistent. As I said in the previous post, Gary Aldrich described the security process in the Clinton White House… there wasn’t one. And that was the White House! Those people had the keys to nearly everything, but a decade or two earlier, they would’ve never been able to get to the front gate.
It is my opinion that the handling and processing of classified documentation is a complete and total mess. I am frankly not surprised all if this were exactly as laid out.
But, I’m not discounting that we could be led by the nose as you stated. That is also possible to me.