Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Pence Had Classified Documents at His Home
Former US Vice President Mike Pence may not be the kind of person one would invite to a dinner party, but he is a good politician when it comes to protecting his career and future. When the classified documents scandal at Mar-a-Lago, he backed Donald Trump. When Joe Biden was discovered to have had a few at his home in Delaware, Mr. Pence opined that there was a double standard (ignoring that a double standard cannot exist when two cases are substantially different). At the same time, he asked outside lawyers to go through the boxes at his Indiana home to see if he had any such papers. They found a few, and Mr. Pence had the documents returned to the National Archives in short order. He has limited his exposure on this matter, and in doing so, he can change the national discussion to take the politics out of it and focus on national security.
Greg Jacob, a designated representative for the vice-presidential records of Mr. Pence, wrote a letter to the National Archives, "Following press reports of classified documents at the personal home of President Biden, out of an abundance of caution, on Monday, January 16, Vice President Pence engaged outside counsel, with experience in handling classified documents, to review records stored in his personal home. Counsel identified a small number of documents that could potentially contain sensitive or classified information interspersed throughout the records." Those documents were at the archives by January 23.
This, of course, is the correct response, the one President Biden took when documents were found at his home. Those documents should not have been there, someone made a mistake and as soon as the mistake was uncovered, it was rectified. That is very different from the way Donald Trump responded. He refused to return the documents, claiming ownership of them. He fought the National Archives for months, and when the FBI tried to enforce a court order to return them, Mr. Trump and his lawyers lied to the government about having returned all of them.
While these individual cases will be disposed of according to the law (except in the case of Mr. Trump who will not go to jail despite having committed felonies in this instance), the systemic problem is still there. Classified documents should not be in unsecured places, and in the chaos of a governmental transition from one administration to the next, it is possible (likely even) that someone is going to put something in the wrong box.
Fixing this is not hard. At the end of one administration, all documents should be passed to the National Archives. The archivists should sanitize the records, removing all classified and non-classified government-owned papers. When those are separated from personal files, those personal files can be shipped to wherever their owner desires. It may take a few extra months, but ex-presidents have lots of time to fill. There is no emergency in getting them their papers.
Underlying all of this is the ridiculous number of classified papers the US government has. Every year, regardless of who is president, the country produces 50 million such records. It is a matter of over-classification. That, in turn, creates access issues. When it comes to espionage, the most lethal weapon James Bond had is nothing compared to a photocopier. Anyone who can get hold of a classified document can make their own copy quickly and cheaply. So much for national security.
An air-gapped intranet (a computer network physically separated from the internet) accessible only in a secured location without printers would prevent all of those problems. It will make it harder for policymakers to use the information, but that will force a review of the classification of every document, streamlining the process and reducing the overall number.
© Copyright 2023 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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