Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Back in the late 1960’s I was in the Army in Germany working in the office of the Adjutant General for Headquarters US Army Europe and 7th Army.

I was just a clerk-typist to start and worked mostly on personnel issues. But every now and then I had to deal with a classified document.

What I dealt with were pretty low classifications, it was personnel assignments and not a nuclear or spy stuff. But even at that level there was a process for handling those documents.

When I was given such a document I had to sign for it so there was a document that showed I had a certain document. I was not to copy it, always keep the cover sheet on top that marked it as classified and what level, and put it in a locked safe if I left my desk. When I was done with it the person I gave it back to signed for it and I was off the hook.

In other words, there was a record of the document and everyone who had possession of it and how long they had possession of it.

Now the headlines are, and have been for months, about presidents, vice-presidents and classified documents that ended up with their personal belongings. You can bet that there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on right now with folks who handed classified stuff to the presidents.

I suspect that there are people who know every document given to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Vice-President Mike Pence and when that document was given to them as well as what aide signed for it.

From what I have read, when a president leaves office the National Archives comes and goes through stuff the president wants to take to make sure it is all fair for him to take. For example gifts of over a certain value are the property of the government even if they were given to the president. Some pieces of correspondence, such as between world leaders, might also be considered government property.

About that time I would assume the folks who had given them classified documents would want them returned or know that they had been properly destroyed. In fact there is probably a form for that! Obviously that didn’t happen or there wouldn’t have been searches for documents.

Trump chose not to allow the National Archives to go through his stuff and so they had to get a subpoena that lead to an FBI raid to retrieve the documents.

That apparently got others to start checking if they had classified documents. Some documents were found at President Biden’s home last fall and later at other places. Apparently Mike Pence’s lawyers suggested they go through his stuff as well. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some other members of Congress are guilty of the same thing. Why Archives didn’t have access to these earlier has not been explained.

Documents are classified for a reason, mostly to not identify sources of the information. In some cases these sources are close to the leadership of other nations, those who know it are few and it is easy to figure who the sources are so they can be eliminated. That would not be good for the U.S. Further, who would be willing to be a source if his or her identity could be compromised through carelessness?

That’s what makes this carelessness with classified information an important issue to resolve.

I would guess that in each case someone on each person’s staff was contacted prior to the end of their boss’s term about classified information that had been given to them. That means that either the staff person ignored the request or the officeholder blew it off.

Presidents and vice-presidents are near the top of the governmental food chain. So I imagine that staff people feel they can only push so far. That means it is even more important for officeholders do their job to protect such documents.

As candidates line up for presidential runs in 2024 this lack of concern for classified material should be a black mark on all their campaigns.