Hearing the latest brouhaha over Hillary Clinton’s emails and her private server, as well as the just released Chilcot Report in the UK covering the Iraq War, I am reminded that it must be that time of year again. Time to once again dust off that old quote by John F. Kennedy’s former National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy: “If you guard your toothbrushes and your diamonds with equal zeal, you’ll probably loose fewer toothbrushes and more diamonds.” It’s a perennial, just as is the problem it identifies – the gross over-classification of government documents, the pervasive — many would say, suffocating – secrecy and the resultant calcification of government’s information network. So much attention is paid to the little stuff, the marginal, the inconsequential, (Bundy’s toothbrushes) that little time, attention, or resources are left for the big stuff – the diamonds of national security. And that means theyand we are at risk.
What Hillary Clinton did is inexcusable, but it is not inexplicable. Same with the findings of the Chilcot Report. Both are reflective of a decades’ old problem that vastly transcends the particulars of any one case and goes to a far more serious question of national security, one that is in no one’s parochial interest to address, but in everyone’s collective interest to solve. And yes, it is one that afflicts both sides of the Atlantic. But let me focus on what I know best, U.S. national security.
{mosads}The question is not about the culpability of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (or her successors at State and the White House who were equally slipshod in handling such materials) but rather, what will it take for government to revisit de novo the entire issue of classification and get it right before the lights go off, before not Edward Snowden, but Chinese or Russian intelligence or ISIS or some homegrown hackers, turn this troglodytic system completely inside out and against itself? And yes, before there is another costly misadventure like that in Iraq.
The underlying problem is not now and never has been one of guarding the secrets, but rather, the identification and designation of secrets. It is like telling a chronic hoarder that his problem is one of organization, that he just needs to plan ahead a little better, to make more room for the next batch of old newspapers, telephone books or tchotchkes, as if the problem were a shortage of space, not the inability to refuse just one more item. No, the problem lies at the threshold – how and what we classify in the first place, not how we store or guard the secrets once brought into government. Once admitted into the vault, it is too late – the damage has been done.
The super-abundance of classified materials reflects an utter lack of discrimination, the inability to separate the merely touchy, the embarrassing, the sensitive, from that scant handful of truly radioactive secrets – those whose disclosure would materially harm the fundamental security of the nation, expose vital ongoing operations, compromise the sources and methods of intelligence gathering, or put the nuclear arsenal at risk. The rest is chaff.
What has happened over the years is that those in senior positions of power, once exposed to the ludicrous extent of the classification process lose faith in the system and recognize that its sclerotic effects on information flow endanger (as opposed to secure) the nation. Out of the need for efficiency, or sheer exasperation with the bureaucracy, they begin to substitute their own personal measures of classification for those of the government. In the U.S., the list of offenders – of those who have abused their access to secrecy, used it for political advantage, or treated materials cavalierly – is as bipartisan as it is long – and stretches back decades, including the likes of National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, General David Petraeus, CIA Director John M. Deutch, Karl Rove (who deleted millions of materials,) the outers of CIA operative Valeria Plame, former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, etc.
Such disregard for classification then trickles down through the ranks (analogous to “bad parenting”) in which all along the chain of command laxity and “flexibility” become normalized. Formal findings yield to ad hoc solutions. Such work-arounds become essential in the life of a bureaucracy, and are often done with a wink and a nod. Original classifications (about 47,000 annually, of which just over one in ten are “Top Secret”) multiply and with each transmission containing or referencing them, become “derivative classifications.” Then the numbers increase exponentially.
Citing the number of secrets is a fool’s errand, but ISOO – the Information Security Oversight Office – is charged with that unenviable task. The 2,000 or so U.S. officials who wield the stamp of classification are not to blame. The solution begins with the President and Congress who would have to demonstrate uncommon courage in ripping up what is, and beginning again. It would require nothing less than a change of culture. Arrayed against them are all the worst instincts of government. No one under the current system pays a price for over-classification – a slap on the wrist at most. But woe to that bureaucrat who lets a secret slip past him or her. The problem is compounded by the uneven punishments doled out to those in the bowels of government who are found to have mishandled classified materials, while their superiors are scolded and then free to go.
And so the entire apparatus works on a kind of CYA – cover-your-A__ __ — mentality. And if that were not enough, there is this – in the tsunami of classified materials that reach the screen or desk of a sitting official, decisions must be made to triage and prioritize the inbox. What self-respecting bureaucrat would choose a document stamped “sensitive” over one marked “Top Secret.?” And what lower level bureaucrat is unaware of that predilection for higher classifications? Who does not recognize that a closely-held secret offers access to the inner circle of influence, preserves authorship and credit, and paves the way for promotion and status? A shared secret? Not so much.
And the ill-fated invasion of Iraq demonstrated, perhaps as much as any case study could in terms of blood and treasure, what happens when intelligence is so closely held that it escapes scrutiny and critical analysis. The secret of WMDs was held tightly not because it was so valuable to the enemy but because it was built upon such shaky ground that it could not have weathered the full review that one would demand before going to war.
The scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton’s personal server, her disregard for the strictures of classification, her seeming lack of contrition may all be terrific fodder in an election year, but the real problem – that of over-classification and the permissive attitudes it breeds, will remain unaddressed for the foreseeable future. Sadly, that Bundy quote will never go out of fashion.
Gup is a best-selling Boston-based author of “Nation of Secrets” and writes frequently on matters of secrecy and national security.