Posted on 01/25/2023 10:38:35 AM PST by Rummyfan
What possible reason could there be for so many classified documents?
In 2022, a woman named Asia Janay Lavarello, a civilian employee of the Defense Department, took materials that included classified documents to both her home and hotel room to help write a thesis project she was working on. She was fired, fined, and sentenced to three months in prison. In 2021, Izaak Vincent Kemp, a contractor with the Air Force, was found to have 112 classified documents among the papers in his home, “[d]espite having training on various occasions on how to safeguard classified material.” He was sentenced to a year in prison. In 2017, a man named Weldon Marshall was sentenced to three years in prison for having classified documents on a disc from his time in the Navy.
There are hundreds of similar examples.
None of these people, as far as I can tell, attempted to sell state secrets to the Russians or the Chinese. Most had merely mishandled documents for personal reasons — perhaps even accidentally. But the Espionage Act (or Presidential Records Act) offers a pardon for cooperating with authorities or for having good intentions or for making mistakes. Those who break laws governing classified documents are subject to strict liability because it’s the mishandling, not the motivations, that matter. Hillary Clinton wasn’t selling top-secret documents when using her illegal private server, but she should have known there was a high probability that foreign governments would be able to hack them. Which is why her disregard for the law was worse than any other official in memory.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
It struck me as odd that many news articles on this topic referred to Trump’s documents as ‘Top Secret’ but Biden’s as merely ‘Classified.’
Did the Founders ever imagine that an elected President could be controlled, threatened and removed from office by the Federal agencies he ostensibly controls, over violation of pervasive, complex and arcane rules, imposed by the US security state itself?
“It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.”
It all just seems a little too strange. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had her unencrypted private server and her non-secure cell phone and HER attorneys were allowed to go through and pick and choose what to delete (33,000 emails!) and what TEAM CELL PHONES TO SMASH (and they had no security clearances), yet no FBI raided HER house.....and no repercussions happened there. James Comey even gave her his Absolution on national TV!
On the other hand, President Trump had a locked-up storage closet, and the FBI knew his files were locked up, AND GUARDED BY SECRET SERVICE AGENTS, yet they still raided his house and DID NOT let his attorneys into the house to observe anything!
And now we have ol’ Slow Joe where, once again, HIS attorneys are allowed to search for documents, with NO security clearances, and without even Visitor Logs at his locations! Hunter and his prostitutes were ALONE with those documents at Joe’s mansion MANY times. He even drove the Corvette parked next to where the classified documents were stored in the garage! And Biden’s Secret Service protection ended after only 6 months when he was VP, so NO ONE was guarding them, after that.
No, Merrick Garland, NO judicial system can say there was fair and equal treatment....unless that judicial system is ITSELF corrupt.
Classified and Joke together brings to mind this song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWHBTDb_iko
The same artist produced “Convoy”. It’s nominally pro-Nixon.
I had a TS/SCI and had duty in a SCIF. It was not difficult to understand what not to do. These people are retards if they thought otherwise.
The vast majority of people shouldn’t even be privy to confidential information, let alone TS/SCI information.
You can classify the paper but you can’t keep it down on the farm.
I was in the Communication Center, 4th Armored Division Headquarters, 1966-67, Top Secret Clearance. We were scared to death of the NSA and Leavenworth. Times have really changed.
About every 12 months, 1980s/1990s...there would be wild crazy story over some officeer/NCO/Airman and classified issues.
At some point, at RAF Chicksands...one of the enlisted guys had gotten his degree finished and accepted to officer school. Brit packers came to his dorm, and started packing up stuff. In the midst of this...he had a whole box of classified messages from the 2 years there (never destroyed). They called the SPs, and the explanation given was that he was going to write a book one day over the material.
He got carried off to several months in prison...released from the AF. All the training they did....never stuck in this guy’s head.
I think a lot of stuff is classified unnecessarily. Probably in DC having a high clearance is some sort of “I’m important” thing. Also, stuff stays classified forever. I was doing research on early test instrumentation on late 50’s underground nuclear tests and old strip chart recorder data was still classified, although everyone who knew what the squiggly lines meant were either retired or dead.
Same here. DIA and NSA Cryptologic Support.
Jail time for us had we done what Clinton, Biden or Pence did. No excuses.
Big guys fly, little guys, fry.
We can excuse Trump because the President has classification authority. He can declassify anything anytime he wants.
There is no authority over him on this issue. Maybe Congress could impeach and remove him, but they didn’t.
We had one, the white noise generators would drive you crazy after a few hours.
Classified like a classified ad.
Best part was when these retards would talk TS/SCI outside the SCIF like it was no big deal. No matter how hard one would try to reel them back in and basically tell them to STFU without bringing attention to what were talking about was an adventure to say the least.
Entitled Egotistical Blowhards.
Years ago, while in the Navy, I signed for a secret document in connection with something or other I was working on. In a phone conversation with the other custodian, I mentioned that the item had a statement that it was to be declassified on a date that had passed. I offered to declassify it, and he nearly had a stroke. Any questions are to be directed to my attorney, whose name is highly classified.
I never said anything outside of duty. You never know who’s crooked or who’s OSI.
Some.
And some are dopes who think they won't get caught.
And some of them are arrogant assholes who think they're above the law.
That's Biden for you.
Really it’s no different than corporate America. They mark everything confidential. I’ve seen drafts of user documentation marked confidential. Like guys, it’s the manual, we’re gonna give it out, it’s not confidential. But it’s the knee jerk. If we say everything is confidential we don’t have to worry about not labeling something that should be confidential correctly. During the lockdowns I got scolded for working on a “work” document on my home PC. Mind you what I was writing was instructions for the guy that was going to certify our software for one of our interops. And it was totally basic “quick start guide” type, how to send a thing, how to change a thing perfectly public level information. But my home computer isn’t safe!! I “should have” RPC’d into my desktop and used the Word there, ignore the fact that I was going to email to a guy in another company.
So yes, everything is classified. Cause it’s easier. And also makes it meaningless. Which is why people wind up ignoring it.
I know from 25 years of working in classified environments that the people who control this material do not consider it a joke. The reason for classifying all of this information is directly related to national security. The content of the information is significant but the most valuable part from an intelligence standpoint is the source or method that is employed to gather it. The same information about an adversary that is published in an open source news document is vastly more valuable when it is provided from contacts with direct knowledge of the internal conversations or decisions. Exposing these sources not only puts them as risk for elimination but jeopardizes access to future intelligence. Classification protects human lives and expensive collection systems that can be destroyed or spoofed by our adversaries. It is no joke.
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