Not less than three presidents. A vp, a secretary of state, an attorney general. The mishandling of classified documents will not be an issue unique to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The matter of classified records and who, exactly, has hung onto them got more complicated Tuesday as news surfaced that former Vice President Mike Pence also had such records in his possession after he left office. Like Biden, Pence willingly turned them over to authorities after they were discovered during a search he requested, in accordance with his lawyer and aides.
The revelations have thrust the problem of proper handling of documents — an otherwise low-key Washington process — into the center of political discourse and laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Policies meant to manage the handling of the nation’s secrets are haphazardly enforced amongst top officials and rely almost wholly on good faith.
It has been an issue on and off for a long time, from presidents to Cabinet members and staff across multiple administrations stretching way back to Jimmy Carter. The difficulty has taken on greater significance since Trump willfully retained classified material at his Florida estate, prompting the unprecedented FBI seizure of 1000’s of pages of records last yr.
It seems former officials from all levels of presidency discover they’re in possession of classified material and switch them over to the authorities not less than several times a yr, in accordance with an individual accustomed to the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity resulting from the sensitive nature of classified documents.
Current and former officials involved within the handling of classified information say that while there are clear policies for a way such information needs to be reviewed and stored, those policies are sometimes brushed off at the best levels. Teams of national security officials, secretaries and military aides who share responsibility for keeping top-level executives informed — and the executives themselves — may bend the principles for convenience, expediency or sometimes resulting from carelessness.
It is a contrast to the more rigid way the procedures are followed across the broader intelligence community, where mishandling information may very well be grounds for termination, a security clearance revocation and even prosecution.
“Executives go forwards and backwards to their house with documents and browse them. They read them at night, they convey them back,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. He contrasted that pattern for top officials to senators, who’re required to retain classified materials in secure rooms on the Capitol.
“I can see how this happens,” he added. “But again, every situation is different. They’re all very serious. So, what number of? How serious? How did you get them? Who had access to them? Are you being cooperative? And the identical set of questions needs to be answered with respect to Pence and with President Biden and President Trump.”
As for the judiciary, a separate federal law, the Classified Information Procedures Act, governs the handling of fabric that comes before judges in criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. One other law deals with foreign intelligence investigations that come before a special court that operates in secrecy. Each laws are intended to protect against the disclosure of classified information.
While Trump intended to maintain the documents — he’s argued, in apparent disregard of the Presidential Records Act, that they were his personal property — he was hardly the primary president to mishandle classified information.
Former President Jimmy Carter found classified materials at his home in Plains, Georgia, on not less than one occasion and returned them to the National Archives, in accordance with the identical one who spoke of standard occurrences of mishandled documents. The person didn’t provide details on the timing of the invention.
An aide to the Carter Center provided no details when asked about that account of Carter discovering documents at his home after leaving office in 1981. It’s notable that Carter signed the Presidential Records Act in 1978 nevertheless it didn’t apply to records of his administration, taking effect years later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Before Reagan, presidential records were generally considered the private property of the president individually. Nonetheless, Carter invited federal archivists to help his White House in organizing his records in preparation for his or her eventual repository at his presidential library in Georgia.
The National Archives declined to comment when asked to offer a listing of times that classified documents were turned over to the agency by former officials.
Meanwhile, other former senior U.S. officials have insisted they’ve at all times appropriately handled classified materials. A spokesman for former Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t leave office with classified materials and none have been discovered at any point since. Freddy Ford, a spokesman for former President George W. Bush, told The Associated Press that “all presidential records — classified and unclassified — were turned over to NARA upon leaving the White House,” referring to the National Archives and Records Administration.
A spokesperson for President Barack Obama didn’t comment but pointed to a 2022 statement from the National Archives that the agency took control of all of Obama’s records after he left office and was “not aware of any missing boxes of Presidential records from the Obama administration.” Former President Bill Clinton’s office said, “All of President Clinton’s classified materials were properly turned over to NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.”
The closing days of any presidency are chaotic, as aides sort through years of their bosses’ amassed materials to find out what have to be turned over to the archives and what could also be retained. Different teams of people are answerable for clearing different offices and maintaining consistent standards can prove difficult, officials said.
In Pence’s case, the fabric present in the boxes got here mostly from his official residence on the Naval Observatory, where packing was handled by military aides somewhat than staff lawyers. Other material got here from a West Wing office drawer, in accordance with a Pence aide who spoke on condition of anonymity resulting from the sensitive nature of the invention. The boxes were taped shut and weren’t believed to have been opened since they were packed, the person said.
There have also been accusations of mishandled documents while officials were still on the job. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took home highly sensitive documents that handled the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program and the terrorist detainee interrogation program within the late 2000s. Hillary Clinton was investigated for mishandling classified information via a non-public email server she used as secretary of state.
But rarely are officials punished for these mistakes. That is largely because, while federal law doesn’t allow anyone to store classified documents in an unauthorized location, it’s only a prosecutable crime when someone is found to have “knowingly” removed the documents from a correct place.
Mishandled documents are sometimes returned with little fanfare or national news coverage. And there is no such thing as a one reason for why records are mishandled, because the strategy of presidential records management plays out amid the chaos at the top of a presidential term and is primarily based a good-faith agreement between the archives and the outgoing administration.
“The National Archives has historically worked under an honor system with any administration,” said Tim Naftali, the primary director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “They work for the president and the vp they usually have partnerships with all these former presidents and vice presidents.”
The White House counsel’s office declined to comment Tuesday on whether Biden would order a review of how classified documents are handled across the federal government in response to the newest discoveries.
The facility to vary or amend how classified documents are handled rests largely with the president. Biden, who’s actively under investigation, will not be more likely to instigate a review or order any changes in procedure since it may very well be seen as a political move meant to higher his own circumstances.
