I know from personal experience.
I know from personal experience.
Y ou know those times when you come across documents marked “Secret” in your garage or root cellar, and you’ll be doggoned where they came from? Yeah, me neither (despite my Navy-ordained security clearances and past access). Neither has my colleague Jack Butler, apparently.
Am I the only one who doesn't have any classified documents? Feeling left out.
— Jack Butler (@jackbutler4815) January 11, 2023
One reason (a very good one) that I’ve never unearthed a few hundred pages of nuclear-engineering worksheets in my off time is that the classified documents and assignments issued to me were kept in lockers secured by reinforced combination padlocks in a guarded government facility (the infamous Rickover building) located on a Navy base protected by the swamps of South Carolina and armed military police (Masters-at-Arms).
Taking documents for a joyride isn’t an option.
As U.S. Code § 1924 makes clear:
(a)
Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.(b)
For purposes of this section, the provision of documents and materials to the Congress shall not constitute an offense under subsection (a).(c)
In this section, the term “classified information of the United States” means information originated, owned, or possessed by the United States Government concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States that has been determined pursuant to law or Executive order to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interests of national security.
So when it turns out the former vice president, Joseph R. Biden, has a few boxes of classified documents from his time in the Obama administration sloshing around in his garage, former servicemen and agency members are within their rights to feel miffed at the delicate treatment given to a grievous breach of protocol that would see any of us regular schmucks frog-marched to prison forthwith.
Biden’s documents scandal is but the latest example, as laid out by Jim Geraghty in a recent Jolt, of higher-ups receiving the lightest of raps on the wrist (fines and temporary losses of clearance) while low-level guys are offered involuntary yearslong tours of the federal prison system.
Here are three of Jim’s examples of the latter:
- In February, a former civilian employee of the Defense Department was sentenced to three months in prison after admitting to taking materials containing classified information to her hotel room and to her personal residence.
- In July 2019, a former defense contractor was sentenced to nine years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for willful retention of national-defense information.
- Back in 2014, a civilian defense contractor and retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army was sentenced to seven years in prisonand three years’ supervised release for willfully communicating classified national-defense information to a person not authorized to receive it and unlawfully retaining classified national-defense information at his home.
Compare these offenses to Biden’s recent remarks, which Charlie Cooke helpfully summarizes:
Thus far, President Biden’s two responses to the discovery that he had been keeping Obama-era classified documents at his personal residence have been:
- I didn’t know I had them until December 20, 2022, and I still don’t know what’s in them.
- Don’t worry, because the documents were safely stored in my “locked garage.”
But both of these cannot be true — at least not deliberately so. If Biden didn’t know he had classified documents in his garage, he cannot have knowingly secured them. Which means that, if his garage was, indeed, locked, it was locked for other reasons, and thus that the classified documents that it contained were secured by dumb luck.
Neither one of Biden’s statements absolves him of possessing classified documents in a place they should never be. “I locked my Kia Soul (even double-pressing the lock for a confirmation chirp) when transporting state secrets” in no way protects one from the fact that one should never have these documents outside of a secure location.
But saying and showing are distinctly different, so how about an example of when I mishandled classified material?
In Nuclear Power School (NPS), the second of the three schools in the Navy’s nuclear pipeline, all of our assignments were either “NOFORN,” i.e., not to be shared with foreign nationals, or “CONFIDENTIAL,” the lowest tier of official classification. None of our instruction was materially different from what one would get in a civilian course.
The distinction between the two types came down to how critical to or illustrative of the Navy’s nuclear-power program these materials were. But the military’s being what it is, practice with classification was part of the course. Looking to make things easy for myself, I took a stack of blank sheets of paper and stamped them NOFORN or CONFIDENTIAL ahead of time.
Well, weeks passed, and assignments whittled down my paper reserves. One day, I was out of NOFORN-stamped paper, having done far more assignments under that classification. So, I did what any genius E-4 does and one-lined (using a ruler to put a single line through) CONFIDENTIAL, in keeping with the proper way to make a correction on Navy documents, initialed next to said one-line, and proceeded to do my homework.
The next day, our instructor, a lieutenant-junior grade and generally a nice enough guy, yanks me from class. Being a dreadful physics student, I took the summons to mean I had botched yet another series of wingding calculations. We go to his office, and he asks, “What the f*** do you think you’re doing declassifying your homework?” Ah. About that.
I explained the shortage of correctly stamped paper in my possession and observed the man die inside. Collecting himself, he sent me into the hall to find a framed image of a declassified document somewhere in the building and to report to him whose signature was on said document. Walking the three levels of that dour building, I discovered there was by the entrance of NPS a missive from the captain of the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, to President Eisenhower, detailing the vessel’s successes. The document had a fat red line through it — “SECRET” — and the initials of a U.S. president’s archivist declassifying it. My officer then explained that the president holds the ability to declassify, not some machinist mate third class with a pen and a dream.
In his exasperated charity, the officer did not put me up for mast (NJP) — typically a half-month’s pay for two months, a reduction in rank, and restriction (toilet-swabbing). But plenty of others found to have intentionally or accidentally left the school building with the same sort of innocuous materials were not as fortunate as I.
Will Biden face any punishment for far greater mismanagement of much more sensitive information? Will Trump? I wouldn’t bet on it.
It’ll be the same little guys as always, who have to pretend that what they manage is essential and precious while their leadership throws vital documents around like an old school bag, forgotten in a corner and smelling of pre-catalytic-converter-era exhaust fumes.