In Washington, ‘classified’ is synonymous with ‘controversy’
WASHINGTON—HILLARY Clinton’s presidential dreams were undermined by her use of a private e-mail server that included classified information.
Donald Trump has risked criminal charges by refusing to return top-secret records to the government after leaving the White House.
And now misplaced files with classified markings could cause a political headache for President Joe Biden.
The three situations are far from equivalent. But taken together, they represent a remarkable stretch in which document management has been a recurring source of controversy at the highest levels of American politics.
For some, it’s a warning about clumsiness or hubris when it comes to handling official secrets. For others, it’s a reminder that the federal government has built an unwieldy—and perhaps unmanageable—system for storing and protecting classified information.
“Mistakes happen, and it’s so easy to grab a stack of documents from your desk as you’re leaving your office, and you don’t realize there’s a classified document among those files,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who works on national security issues. “You just didn’t hear about it, for whatever reason.”
Now Americans are hearing about it all the time. Political talk shows have been clogged with conversations about which papers were stashed in which box in which closet. Voters are getting schooled in intelligence jargon like TS/SCI, HUMINT and damage assessments.
Clinton’s e-mail server was a dominant storyline of her presidential campaign, and the criminal investigation into Trump has clouded his hopes of returning to the White House. Republicans who recently took control of the House are now poised to examine Biden’s own document practices as well, especially after a second batch of classified material was found.
“The American people are very well aware of issues involving classified documents in part because we’ve been talking about them for almost eight years,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant.
That’s when a House Republican committee investigating the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, discovered that Clinton had used a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state. The revelation led to a federal investigation that didn’t result in any charges, but 110 e-mails out of 30,000 that were turned over to the government were determined to have had classified information.
Trump, who pummeled Clinton over her handling of the e-mails, won the election and swiftly demonstrated carelessness with secrets. He memorably discussed sensitive intelligence with the Russian ambassador to the United States, leading to concerns that he may have jeopardized a source that helped foil terrorist plots.
After disputing the results of his election defeat, Trump left office in haphazard fashion, and he brought boxes of government documents with him to Mar-a-lago, his Florida resort. Some of them were turned over to the National Archives, which is responsible for presidential records, but he refused to provide others.
Eventually the Justice Department, fearing that national security secrets were at risk, obtained a search warrant and found more top secret documents at the resort.
A special counsel was appointed to determine whether any criminal charges should be filed in the case or a separate investigation into Trump’s attempts to cling to power on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol.
Larry Pfeiffer, a former intelligence official, said the situation with Trump’s documents is far different than ones he encountered while working in government.
During the time that Pfeiffer was CIA chief of staff, classified files turned up in the wrong place in presidential libraries a handful of times, he said.
“It just happens,” said Pfeiffer, now director of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University. “Mistakes get made, and stuff gets found.”
He said that seems more likely to be the case regarding the documents with classified markings that were found at an office used by Biden at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement after his term as vice president ended.
Biden’s personal lawyers discovered the documents and contacted the White House counsel’s office, and the National Archives picked up the records the next day.