SECRETS for Dummies

The partisan hype machine geared up after the Trump, then Biden, now Pence “Oops I forgot I had classified documents” scandals. I fully expected some partisans to get whiplash as they excused, then excoriated, then well, what do you do after you’ve already taken every contradictory position on an issue? Stay quiet? Never!

But the steady drip of revelations also brought out another tired old set of talking heads: the “there’s too much classified information” group. Some of these are so-called democracy promoters who claim secrets are antithetical to democratic government, or we should spend much more de-classifying than we do now. Some are journalists who crave access and hate the fact they can’t have it, or small-government advocates who see an easy target in the always-growing national security establishment, one which often does not respond publicly to criticism. Some are politicians who are looking for a scapegoat. Let’s tackle these objections, shall we?

First, all forms of government have secrets, and even Western democracies (and I hate that term, but permit me) all have intelligence organizations. George Washington personally ran spies as a General. Benjamin Franklin, as Post-Master General, oversaw secret communications and intercepted enemy ones. Part of the consent of the governed is to accept that there are reasons to withhold information. Why? To protect lives and avoid wasting resources. Classified information sometimes contains names of people (“sources”) who provided it, and should they become public, bad things would ensue. Wonder why some government files about the Kennedy assassination are still redacted or classified? In it are names or descriptions of people who provided information, and those people or their immediate families are still alive. What do you think happens in Cuba when somebody’s family name appears in a CIA file? You think Havana forgets or forgives what granddad did?

Likewise, classified information may include clues as to the technical way it was collected (“methods”). Let’s say there is a super-secret satellite which can detect and analyze someone’s breath, allowing us to track individuals and determine their health and activities. Even a document which simply states “Kim Jong-Il is out drinking again” as its bottom line would reveal we have a real-time ability to monitor this situation. If released, the other side can begin researching how we do it, and ways to defeat our capability. And billions of dollars in research, production, and operations would go down the drain, not to mention we’d be totally surprised the next time Kim showed up drunk!

This “sources and methods” problem is like a web, where every document must be scrutinized for how its release could jeopardize national security. The original decision to classify something is easy (more on this later): there are rules any analyst, collector, or official can consult and apply. When agencies are asked to de-classify something, it’s much harder. How does one determine whether all of a source’s relatives are dead or safe? How much of a give-away about the technical method is too much? What if the document has multiple references from multiple agencies? Each must consider and rule on it.

Most agencies treat de-classification as an additional duty for employees, and it is one widely hated by the workforce. Why? It’s hard, time-consuming and nobody gets a bonus for a record number of de-classifications, but woe-be-it to you if you release something that should not have been released. Like being a gate-guard, there is no upside for being lenient. So we’ll never spend much on de-classifying, plus, what’s the relative benefit to the American public? Documents which have high classifications based on sources and methods often have an analytic line that is simple or even obvious. De-classification results in a “so-what?”

The second complaint comes from journalists, and you can see a prime example here from Fareed Zakaria, who should know better. He cites the amount of classified, when he knows this is a canard, and even throws out the old ‘information classified because it is embarrassing’ idea which is specifically prohibited under Executive Order 12356. Let’s focus on the amount of classified. 99.9% of classified information exists not as documents or photos, but as digits in a secure classified computer system. It is physically inside vaults and SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) which are monitored and secured. The computer systems themselves are encrypted and monitored both by systems and people. How much classified is there? Nobody knows, any more than you can say how much info is in your cloud storage right now. The government generates enormous amounts every day. Take the breath-sensing satellite I made up: it circles the globe, taking sensings, and every unique sense of a location is classified, because if you had it, you might be able to figure out what the capability was. So the sensing over your favorite bar is just as classified as the one over the Kremlin, not because of the target, but because of the capability. And the gigabytes of sensings are stored in the classified system. How much are they and is it too much?

It’s only count-able when you produce it as a document, photo or other “thing.” 99.9% of such classified “things” are produced and kept in those same vaults and SCIFs, and only leave them when people properly trained and authorized to do so take them out to show them to whomever needs to see them (sometimes senior officials), but more often that not other intelligence personnel. So the overwhelming majority of classified info exists and is secure, regardless of how much there is. The problem is not the amount, it’s that people get involved.

So does the US government keep spending more all the time for this classified information? Yes. We get better at collecting and using it, and we acquire more. Does it cost a lot? Depends. As any info tech geek will tell you, storage is the cheap part. The government even eventually realized that and outsourced some of its classified holdings to cloud-storage firms like Amazon and Google, because they can operate at extreme orders of magnitude. The expensive part is acquiring the data, and do you want the national security system working with more and better, or less and worse, data?

The third complaint comes from those looking for a scapegoat: someone else to blame. Politicians have a love-hate relationship with classified information. They love it when a secret gives them an advantage in a negotiation, or prevents a crisis, or helps win a war. They hate it when they are told what they can and cannot say in public, for obvious reasons, or when they have to turn in their classified documents before leaving for the day. They also dislike being subjected to background investigations (as do we all). A security clearance is not a right, it is a privilege, so one can be denied for a host of reasons for which a politician might not feel they should be penalized: extramarital affairs, suspicious foreign links (business or family), past drug use, lewd and lascivious conduct, lying (this one scares them the most), bankruptcy. The standard is not a legal one; it’s whether you have weaknesses or vulnerabilities which would make you an opportune target or desperate enough to trade classified info.

Things get especially sticky when it comes to Congress. Remember that most classification comes from Executive branch guidelines, so it does not apply to the co-equal Legislative branch. Congress Members (both House and Senate) have security clearances by virtue of being elected! Their staff must submit to background checks. Furthermore, Members like to go before the cameras and opine, but if you access classified info, there may be things you can’t say publicly. In general, Congress Members and staffs are more rigorous about handling classified, since they in effect must police themselves. Watch carefully the reactions of Democratic Senators to news that classified documents (more than 14 years old) from Senator Biden’s service were found in his home. The degree of shock and concern was much greater than the original case.

Congress created two committees (the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI or “Sissy”, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI or “Hipsy”). Both were originally quite bipartisan and worked primarily to provide oversight on secret matters, especially as intelligence budgets climbed during the Cold War. Afterwards, the HPSCI became very partisan and worse so over time. The most important role these committees have (in my opinion) was to control the flow of classified info in the Congress. There was no need for every Member to see everything; the rest of the Members in effect gave the committees a proxy to tell them “it’s ok.” Which the committees did. Everything revealed by now-Russian citizen Snowden was briefed to and authorized by the committees. It pains me (and many others) when they ran from responsibility with a “What? Gambling in this establishment? I’m shocked!” response.

(brief aside: I had to chuckle when someone was defending Rep. Swalwell–and whether he should be on the HPSCI–by saying “he hasn’t been charged with anything!” Gosh, that’s a great thing. No, he just exhibited horrendously bad judgment by having a relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese agent. Who knows what she has about him? He should have been turned out of the HPSCI by Speaker Pelosi. In the good ol’ days, both parties policed their own when it came to the intelligence committees.)

As to the current cases, Trump can’t really use a scapegoat defense, since he claimed the documents are his and he de-classfied them. No one saw President Biden with the documents, so it’s possible an assistant put the documents where they didn’t belong. But that means it was multiple assistants putting multiple things in multiple wrong places over a decade and a half. Or just Joe. Apply Occam’s Razor here. Finally, Pence has the strongest scapegoat argument, as he denied having documents, he probably did not box them up himself and send them to his home, and they were unopened. But we’ll see. Every politician wants a scapegoat; it’s their favorite pet.

There is no dichotomy between secrets and accountable government of the democratic or other sort. There are more secrets than ever, because there is more information available than ever. No, you and I can’t see them, and there are good reasons for that. Yes, the Congress can see them, and does with great regularity. Yes, senior government officials of both the executive and legislative branches misbehave and mishandle classified information. And everybody should own a scapegoat.