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| The Penn Biden Center held the first of the two sets of classified documents found. |
For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).
But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.The discovery of Obama-era classified papers in multiple locations former Vice President Joe Biden used is the White House’s latest fiasco. “How could that possibly happen? How could anyone be that irresponsible?” Biden declared. Except that was him bemoaning to “60 Minutes” after the FBI found classified documents in its raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume both Biden and Trump are guilty as hell of mishandling classified documents. (Throw in Hillary Clinton for a trifecta.) The current and former president deserve the full penalty of law that they approved for other violators (some of whom have recently been sent to federal prison for mishandling documents).
But the latest scandal shows the need to puncture the iron curtain that both Republicans and Democrats dropped over the federal government.
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Biden ripped Donald Trump when classified documents were found in his Mar-a-Lago home.Getty Images
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Even some Biden appointees claim to recognize the perils of the classification system. According to Politico, the Biden White House is launching a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for...
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Biden ripped Donald Trump when classified documents were found in his Mar-a-Lago home.Getty Images
Since the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year. In 2004, Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) derided the federal classification system as “incomprehensibly complex” and “so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.” The New York Times reported in 2005 that federal agencies were “classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like ‘sensitive security information.’” It’s gotten worse since then.
Politicians are far more prone to condemn whistleblowers than to oppose secrecy-shrouding federal abuses. Consider the reaction in 2013 after Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s surveillance crime spree, which included targeting Americans “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) responded, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” In the same way, congressmen presume that secrecy does no harm as long as federal dirt never leaks out.
Except when politicians or other officials profit from shoveling dirt. The combination of pervasive secrecy and selective disclosure empowers Washington insiders to spur one media stampede after another.
Trump’s presidency was crippled by leaks of classified, often false or misleading, material on RussiaGate. After a two-year investigation (and more leaks), special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to prosecute Trump or his campaign officials for colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. But the RussiaGate controversy helped the Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.
In 2019, a leak of the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment. In 2020, Biden won the presidency in part because federal agencies suppressed troves of potentially damning documents on his or his son’s dealings in Ukraine and other foreign nations. The FBI confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was bona fide but aided other federal agencies and officials who discredited its revelations of Biden family corruption just before Election Day.
Even some Biden appointees claim to recognize the perils of the classification system. According to Politico, the Biden White House is launching a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for...
