The criminal culpability of Donald Trump and the sloppiness of the staffs of both Joe Biden and Mike Pence have combined to create a crisis over the handling of classified materials. The former involved Trump’s intentionally keeping large amounts of classified material at Mar-a-Lago; the latter led to small amounts of intelligence at Biden’s former office and his home, as well as in Pence’s home. Since I held high-level security clearances for more than four decades while in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State and the Department of Defense, I have something to offer on the issue of secrets and secrecy.
First, there is a simple fix to the problem of presidents and vice presidents being responsible for the closing of their White House offices and the boxing of sensitive materials. This work is done at the final stages of a presidential term by staff members, some of whom probably even lack the clearances to handle sensitive materials. The closing down of these offices and the sorting of materials should be done by qualified members of the General Services Administration or, better yet, the National Archives and Records Administration, which can catalog sensitive materials as well as package them. In the case of Trump’s perfidy, the National Archives knew it was missing certain documents but had no idea about the rest of the items Trump was concealing.
Second, the government’s classification system terms items marked “confidential” as liable to cause “damage to the national security”; “secret” as running the risk of “serious damage”; and “top secret” causing “exceptionally grave damage” to national security. I never read a “confidential” or “secret” document that could cause serious damage to national security, and even in the case of “top secret” the notion of “exceptionally grave damage” is hyped to the point of uselessness. In the case of the documents found in Biden’s former office, these probably date from his term as vice president, and their shelf life from seven to 15 years ago probably renders them limited in value. The documents in Pence’s possession, also likely from his time as VP, are newer, but still at least two years old.
