As the court appointed Judge begins his work, I hope he understands the basic premise of the Intelligence Community’s (IC) classification system. The Florida judge clearly didn’t. It is the sources and methods that are important to protect, not necessarily the information contained in any individual report. To seek to declassify something you must go back to the collector that made the initial classification determination for its approval. Once approval is granted you must also physically mark the report as unclassified. None of the documents that the FBI obtained that I can see have unclassified markings and as such are still classified.
What worries me most is the SCI designation displayed on many of the documents. For the uninitiated this is a sign that human sources were involved in the collection of the information. The ones marked TOP SECRET SCI are particularly sensitive and almost certainly restricted to a small number of people with a need to know. It is common for there to be a list of the specific people that have access to such material and in most cases the list is extremely small. Although putting them on the polygraph might prove interesting, I would argue that President Trump’s lawyers don’t have a need to know, and under current standards would likely be considered security risks.
God only knows who may have had access to this material when it was not properly protected. Expanding the number of people cleared to see these documents during the work of the Independent Master only makes matters worse. When did the Judiciary get into the business of making a determination on what is classified or not? Last time I checked not a single court in the land was part of the IC. The documents belong to the Executive Branch. They have been determined to be classified. The Florida judge’s ruling, instead of helping protect our nation’s secrets, establishes a process that only adds to the possible compromise of the IC’s sources and methods. Hopefully, the Master will understand the difficult position he has been placed in and quickly decide that the crime was taking the classified materials home and that they should be quickly returned to their rightful owner: The US Intelligence Community.
The sooner the FBI can continue its investigation of who had access to the documents and rule out the possibility of a foreign adversary having seen and photographed them I will sleep a lot easier. Whatever the Florida judge may think, the latter point is a real possibility. We know that foreign intelligence organizations have targeted Mar-a-Lago since President Trump was elected in 2016. Some have surely attempted to join the club directly or befriend its existing members to gain full access to its facilities. Others almost certainly have focused on recruiting employees of the club. Either way, for those who believe that a foreign HUMINT case officer can’t gain access to private areas of the club or that a lock would keep them from gaining access to materials found there is living in a dream world. It is an essential element of HUMINT tradecraft for both counterintelligence/law enforcement and espionage case officers to enter a protected area, search the premises, photograph materials, and leave without anyone knowing they were there.
Not to have known that demonstrates a clear lack of concerns for the rules governing the classification of intelligence materials. You would have thought that after handling such information for four years at least that much would have sunk in. Guess not.
Just saying.
Carl us right on - I would suggest the Executive Branch May the constitutional right to ignore the so-called Judge’s ruling to have the special master review IC controlled intelligence..