Classified! Steal Secrets at Your Own Risk
Those guilty of mishandling government secrets are treated unequally under the law.
Mishandling of classified government information has been in the news a lot lately, centering on Donald Trump’s great domain robbery and Joe Biden’s official secrets Easter egg hunt. Treating the nation’s closest held secrets like a sack of Halloween candy is nothing new nor rare. And the consequences, if caught, depend on where you stand in the official pecking order. If you’re a lowly schlub laboring in the bowels of the bureaucracy earning a middling GS salary, you will go directly to jail without passing “Go.” On the other hand, if you’re Hillary Clinton, you move on to selecting new drapes for the room where you had your home office server that processed gazillobytes of official government information, including classified. As a military veteran recently reminded me, there are “different spanks for different ranks.”
Let’s first examine some past cases.
In 2017, the FBI arrested National Security Agency employee Nghia Hoang Pho for removing “massive troves of highly classified national defense information without authorization and kept it at his home.” The purloined stash, accumulated over a period of five years, included Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) documents. Pho worked in a highly sensitive cybersecurity program. He was sentenced the following year to five-and-a-half years in prison, followed by three years’ probation.
The FBI arrested another NSA employee, Harold T. Martin, in 2016 for retaining at his Glen Burnie, MD home at least 50 terabytes of classified data, the equivalent of 500 million pages, much of it top secret. Martin, a mentally unbalanced hoarder, had squirrelled away the paper documents in his garage over a period of two decades. He was sentenced to nine years imprisonment plus three years’ probation.
Two things stand out with these cases: 1) in neither one could prosecutors find firm evidence that the men had tried to sell or transmit the official secrets to a foreign government, which would have gotten them much stiffer sentences. They were cavalier hoarders, not traitors; and 2) they were both prosecuted by U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur. Yes, that Hur — named by Attorney General Merrick Garland as Special Counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s allegedly improper retention of classified documents.
These are merely two examples of government employees with security clearances caught having smuggled classified information outside of their place of work. God only knows how many have done so and never have been caught.
An official much senior to these NSA functionaries would have gotten away with his theft of state secrets had his car not been stolen.
Graham Martin was America’s last ambassador to South Vietnam, having been evacuated along with the rest of the embassy staff in April 1975. His distinguished diplomatic career included being envoy to Italy, Thailand and the United Nations. But along with his toothbrush and deodorant, before he was evacuated, the ex-ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary packed up crates of some of the most sensitive documents that flow through embassy comms, including back-channel CIA cables which circumvent the State Department’s regular traffic system, according to the Washington Post.
In December 1978, Graham’s car was stolen — along with a hoard of highly classified documents which he kept in the trunk. One of them, labeled “Top Secret,” was found in the sticky little hands of a North Carolina student. Local authorities alerted the FBI. Most of the sensitive documents were retrieved, but many others were not. To make a long story short, the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute in 1979 due to Graham’s “poor health.” He died eleven years later at age 77.
Different spanks for different ranks.
I hereby make my own confession, as I described in a previous piece:
At regular intervals, Diplomatic Security at the State Department unleashes a small horde of young Marines after hours on weekends to freely rummage through desks and work spaces in search of unfiled classified documents and related security violations. They leave a “pink slip” on the offender’s desk informing them of the violation along with instructions to file a report with DS. One can either appeal, or gulp and take the heat. Get three pink slips within a certain space of time and they pull your security clearances. This is akin to a long distance truck driver having his driver’s license yanked, or a lawyer temporarily disbarred. In other words, your career is toast — or close to it. Nothing to sneeze at.
The ongoing White House scandal over the willy-nilly granting of security clearances underscores the gravity of playing loose with the country’s national security.
I got a dreaded pink slip the day after taking over the Afghanistan portfolio. I was the victim of my predecessor in the job, a misanthropic slob who had stuffed a confidential document in the top desk drawer. I appealed. And lost. Too bad, too sad said the sensitive and smileless George Smiley’s in DS. “You own it. You pay.” This kind of thing can make one defensive and paranoid. “Clean desk - Safe career” is the watch-word. Three pink slips and you’re out — in the dugout with the Baltimore Orioles. Needless to say, I kept that beaten up old GSA piece of furniture super clean during my two years futilely striving to bring freedom and democracy to the war-wracked Afghan people. The experience also gives one a new perspective on the Marines — Semper Fi a**holes!
And we of the lower ranks never do escape the cold dead hands of Uncle Sam. Till the day my heart beats its last, I must submit to government censors all that I write and speak relating to national security, including this commentary. And the censors, whose job is to ensure I spill no secrets, require that I finish my eloquent prose with: The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
Two observations on classified information:
Call me biased but I don’t fully buy the “government classifies too much” trope. If a foreign source tells a diplomat or intel officer something sensitive and in confidence, or if a document deals with intel collection or ops, or details regarding weapons systems and ops, it’s got to be classified. Period. The same goes for frank commentary on foreign governments or actors as well as policy recommendations. The reason behind more classified materials being produced is largely due to the growth in output from expanding agencies and contractors over the years, rather than from overzealous bureaucrats over-classifying things.
The lopsided number of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago vs Biden’s garage, or the comparative number stamped Top Secret is pretty irrelevant. It’s like debating whether someone is “somewhat pregnant.” The deed has been done. Its relativity in one case versus another is almost a philosophical question.
I, for one, am not waiting with bated breath on what happens in the cases of the feuding prezes. I predict neither will go to jail, though I don’t rule out some wrist-slapper, perhaps a fine, for Putin’s poodle.
My parting opinion: Republicans’ perfervid, slop-sweat efforts to draw false equivalence between the Mar-a-Lago haul and the Corvette boneyard collection are all brainless, point-scoring politics. Trump lied, stalled and obstructed justice — and his nefarious plans for the documents he stole are limited only by one’s imagination. Uncle Joe, on the other hand, coughed up the materials voluntarily, once discovered, though his people revealed the fact only weeks afterward once it was leaked to CBS.
Meantime, I’ve got to dash this piece off to the censors. And, drum roll, here again. . .
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
As with many of us, I still unblinkingly scan my desk at home for "classified" before leaving my home office. I also have a real genuine burn bag in which I dump financial and other sensitive stuff. And we have a small shredder. Old habits stick!
Ah, yes, the dreaded pink-slip-issuing leathernecks. You bring back memories, Brother James. I certainly agree with the different spanks for different ranks truism. Spank them all!