Biden and Trump Endure the Dysfunction of Secrecy
Biden and Trump Endure the Dysfunction of Secrecy
Rampant over-classification is fuel for the Washington circus.
In an incisive letter to the Washington Post, Jim Geraghty, senior correspondent for National Review, nails the boiling controversy about Trump, Biden, and their handling of classified documents. The problem, he observes, is America’s overblown secrecy system more than the behavior of any individual.
Heck, documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remain classified nearly 60 years after the fact. The National Archives says of declassifying JFK assassination material that “postponement decisions now affect less than 4,400 documents in the Collection” — like that’s a good thing. The National Archives says releasing the remaining documents could inflict “identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations where the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” Really?
In the contretemps over presidents Donald Trump and Biden possessing classified documents they shouldn’t have, Democratic partisans will insist that Trump ought to be prosecuted while Biden merely made harmless error borne of disorganization; Republican partisans will argue the reverse.
No doubt there are differences between the two cases, but it’s hard to argue that one warrants jail time while the other merits a shrug.
No, it's easy to argue that the one with over 11,000 documents, lying about it, refusing for over a year to cooperate with the National Archives, filing a lawsuit that led to Judge Aileen Cannon receiving a scathing rebuke from the appeals court, with Trump claiming the documents were "his property", and possible obstruction of justice by Trump and others, is distinguishable enough from a dozen documents immediately returned with full cooperation, to merit possible felony indictments in the former case, and an admonition in the latter.
And that's probably what is going to happen when the two special counsels conclude their investigations.
You do realize that they still keep documents obtained from Japan and Germany after WWII also remain classified, right? Richard Sorge for example, his files remain classified and within CIA control. He was a spy in the 30's and was arrested in 1941. The atomic weapons program of the Axis powers remain in the possession of our government and remain classified. The JFK files have files that remain classified all the way back to 1943 and earlier. The magnitude of the story behind the JFK assassination is so vast, it is mind boggling.