Confidential documents in the United States: a problem that dates back to Jimmy Carter

At least three presidents, one vice president, one secretary of state, one attorney general. The mismanagement of classified documents in the United States This is not a problem unique to President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.

The matter of classified documents was further complicated on Tuesday when news broke that former Vice President Mike Pence also had those documents in his possession after he left office. Like Biden, Pence willingly turned them over to the authorities.

Revelations on the mismanagement of exposed documents an inconvenient truth: policies designed to control the nation’s handling of secrets are enforced haphazardly among top officials and depend almost entirely on good faith.

It’s been an on-and-off-again problem for decades, from presidents to cabinet members to the staff of multiple administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter.

The issue has grown in prominence since Trump deliberately withheld classified material on his Florida property, prompting the FBI to seize unprecedented thousands of pages of documents last year.

Current and former officials involved in handling classified information say that while there are clear policies on how such information should be reviewed and archived, those policies are sometimes set aside at the highest levels.

“Executives come and go to your house with documents and read them. They read them at night, they bring them back,” Senator Tim Kaine said, D-Va. He likened that model for senior officials to senators, who are required to store classified materials in secure rooms on Capitol Hill.

Trump wasn’t the first president to mishandle classified information. Former President Jimmy Carter found classified material in his home in Plains, Georgia on at least one occasion and returned them. Before Ronald Reagan, presidential records were generally considered the president’s private property.

Former leaders defend themselves

Officials insisted they had always handled classified materials properly. A spokesman for former Vice President Dick Cheney said he did not leave office with classified material.

Freddy Ford, spokesman for former President George W. Bush, said “all presidential documents were handed over after he left the White House.”

A spokesman for President Barack Obama did not comment, but pointed to a 2022 statement from the National Archives that no items were missing. Bill Clinton’s office said all materials were properly delivered in accordance with the law.

However, experts point to it the closing days of any presidency are chaoticwhile assistants go through years of materials their bosses have accumulated to determine what should be turned over to the archives and what can be kept.

Different teams of people are responsible for clearing out a number of offices, and maintaining consistent standards can be challenging.

In Pence’s case, the material found in the boxes came mostly from his official residence at the Naval Observatory, where military assistants did the packing instead of staff lawyers.

The boxes were taped shut and are not believed to have been opened while packed.

There were also allegations of mishandling of documents while officials were still on duty. But officials are rarely punished for these mistakes. This is largely because while federal law does not allow anyone to store classified documents in an unauthorized location, it is only a prosecutable offense when someone is found to have “knowingly” removed the documents from an appropriate location.

Battered documents are often returned with little fanfare or national news coverage.

And there is not a single reason for records to be handled improperly, as the presidential records management process takes place in the midst of chaos at the end of a presidential term and relies heavily on a good faith agreement between archives and outgoing administration.

Source: AP

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