Senate pitches classification reform in light of Pentagon leaks, White House documents

Senators on Thursday offered a pair of bills that would offer “a whole of government reform of the classification system,” designed to address both the leaking of Pentagon documents by an Air Guardsman as well as the handling of classified records as presidents leave office.

Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said the bills would set up processes for reviewing classified records before executives leave office and would also aim to improve insider threat programs to identify those who might leak U.S. government secrets.

The bill comes shortly after the committee was able to secure from the Justice Department the various documents from the homes and offices of former President Trump and President Biden from his tenure as vice president.

Warner noted the lack of oversight of what was packed as each left, saying a security review would now be required.

“There was no checking process by the archivist. So that becomes a formal step rather than a ‘nice to do,’” he told reporters Wednesday.

He also referenced the leaking of classified documents by Jack Teixiera, a Massachusetts air guardsman who posted the information on a private group in Discord, before it spilled out to other sites and eventually to media outlets.

“We will also require minimum standards for insider threat programs. We’ve seen the failure of those insider threat programs with the recent incident of Airman Teixiera so that by having insider threat programs in place, it would point out where somebody is…walking out the door with classified documents,” he said.

The bill builds on an yearslong effort to tackle the overclassification of information – contributing to a system where those with clearances have broad access to what might range from minor insights to some of the most closely guarded secrets.

That system can be accessed in part by an estimated 4 million people who hold a security clearance at various levels.

“Every single day, more and more classified records are created. They then build into a digital tsunami that basically overwhelms the declassification system,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) a longtime proponent of classification reform.

“I want to be very blunt about it. My view is to protect sources and methods and declassification reform go hand in hand. That’s because it’s a lot easier to protect important secrets when you’re not acting like everything is a secret.” 

The legislation also sets a 25 year maximum for how long records may remain classified.

But ahead of that timeline, it would put the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in charge of leading a reform of the classification system, including more efficient declassification of records. And it would in essence create a “tax” on agencies stemming from how many records they classify.

The bill deems that documents should only be classified “where the harm to national security reasonably expected from disclosure outweighs the public interest.”

The sponsors noted a tendency for agencies to want to classify information that could be embarrassing, creating a lack of transparency for taxpayers. But they also pointing the larger problem highlighted by Teixiera.

“The people’s right to know is still important in a democracy, all the reasons that this makes sense. But I would add that in today’s environment it is too great of a risk to have a circumstance in which so much information is classified that we failed to do the job of protecting the information that should be classified,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.

“And we’ve seen it too many times. And we’ve seen it most recently within the last month.”