Tiedrich: McCabe on how misplacing some classified docs is frighteningly easy

[live love laugh]

… how the fuck are classified documents ending up all the fuck over the place? … For a really good explanation, let’s turn to Andrew McCabe, former Acting and Deputy Director of the FBI, speaking on his and Alison Gill’s Excellent Jack podcast. This is from the January 15 episode, about 4 minutes in. (by the way, you need to be a regular listener to the Jack podcast. it’s a deep dive into Jack Smith’s investigations. new episodes drop every Sunday. transcription is mine, so all of the transcription mistakes are mine as well.)

McCabe:

“… so, SCI is a designation given to some top-secret information and it basically says that if something is SCI it must be maintained in a SCIF, or a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility. so when I was working in counter-terrorism in the FBI, my office was a SCIF, so we could have TS SCI material wherever we were working. but it had to stay there; it couldn’t leave the vault, as they call it, unless you have authorization to transport it essentially to another SCIF. and then beyond SCI information, there’s something called Code Word Protected Information.

so the easiest way to understand this, is the most-sensitive programs that the federal government, the intelligence community is involved in are protected by code words. so any kind of writings or talking about that stuff is covered by a protective code word, and you have to be on a very small list of people that have access to what they call ‘the cabinet’ that contains that code word material. of all these different types of material, the only one that’s actually serialized and tracked is code word protected information. [emphasis mine] that stuff, when it comes to your office, usually in the hands of one of your agency’s security officers. they make you sign for it before they let you look at it. you can look a at it, and you typically have to give it right back, even if you’re working in a SCIF. that stuff is taken and stored by security officers in a special place. and there’s a list of all the people who are exposed to that particular code word information at any time.”


…

… but what about Donald Trump, I hear you asking. can’t Trump claim plausible deniability here, just like Biden and Pence? yes, he could have, except that Donald Trump, is his very special Donald Trump way, fucked himself by having documents in his desk drawer, mixed in with other personal items, showing that by handling the docs, he knew he had them.
also there’s the obstruction of justice part, which in itself it crimey as fuck.

so in summation: Donald Trump committed crimes. Joe Biden and Mike Pence did not. party at my house when the indictments come down!

https://jefftiedrich.substack.com/p/how-the-fuck-are-classified-documents?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1162742&post_id=98890163&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[cilla4progress]

2. Love her podcasts!

Hers is one of my must- listen voices!!

And he is great too!!

From, a Fellow Fan



PS Bradley Moss on Alex Wagner's show 1/24 was a solid voice of reason on the issue, too.

[Pobeka]

6. Me to. Listening to 1 hour of "Jack" a week is incredibily worthwhile.

They do a nice job explaining complex govt procedures for the layperson, and what those things mean for the current DOJ, and related activities.

[SKKY]

3. For heavy-hitters at the executive level, I imagine it's frightningly easy...

...to misplace classified information (Everything you deal with at that level is "highly classified&quot . I was read into SCI for most of my 20-year Navy career, so I obviously can't imagine a scenario where classified information would have been found in my house. But then again, I'm not being briefed in my house 24/7, nor did I travel with TS/SCI, nor did I receive classified e-mail on my mobile device. So, it's really comparing apples to oranges. I actually think, at the end of the investigation, it will be discovered a staffer misplaced the information.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

7. +1. "travel with TS/SCI" is an interesting concept.

Creates thoughts of a high-security vault on Air Force One and at other presidential locals.

KY

[Deep State Witch]

8. They have special couriers for that

If classified material has to be transported, there are special couriers for that. Usually it involves a double-locked bag or briefcase, and a large amount of training. If something has to be transported overseas, it's generally done via military transport or other USG-approved carriers.

If documents are carried onto AF1, they are probably in the double-locked briefcases, and are returned to those briefcases.

I think the problem is that the Principal customer (POTUS, VPOTUS, Cabinet Secretaries, Senators and Congresscritters who are not part of the Group of 8) are NOT given the training that is given to regular government employees that handle classified material. (Probably with the exception of the DNI and heads of intelligence agencies.) If POTUS asks to retain that piece of classified information, the handler (either a military person or a civilian intelligence employees) probably can't say no without fear of reprisal. After all, that's Customer #1.

This would be the perfect time for Biden to call on DNI Haynes to order a top-down review of how classified documents are stored, transmitted, and retained. Especially to Principals. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't already going on.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

11. Thanks for those thoughts.

I'm betting the Secret Service is under the looking glass at this time as well.

No one is above the law and no one should feel they're above getting proper security training, including frequent refresher sessions.

[live love laugh]

9. The article describes travel as being between local work and home

offices with home offices having designated locked areas (or vaults) for lower-level SCI classified documents.

Unlike Biden and Pence, I think TFG had higher level Code Word required docs which are tracked, required signatures for receipt and return, and shouldn’t be kept.

[Deep State Witch]

14. Exactly

Especially the nuclear stuff. That's really close-hold information.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. Thanks for the transcription!

This sounds like what I suspected which was that nobody actually tracks lower-level 'classified' documents like Biden and Pence had, but because IQ45 had 'Top-Secret' docs, those had 'records' that could be looked up and serve as a source for the subpoena.

[live love laugh]

10. Yep that's my understanding too.

[MineralMan]

5. While in the USAF in the late 60s,

I handled and even created lots of Code Word Protected documents. The writer is correct. They were handled with much more care than any other documents.

However, I will say this: If you are surrounded by such documents and deal with them on a daily basis, you do get a little lazy about their security over time. Fortunately, where I worked, you never took them away from your workplace, so they had no chance of being found somewhere else.

It's like working with explosives. The more you do it, the more you get used to handling them. The danger is in forgetting just how destructive they can be. If that happens, things can go "BOOM!"

The specific code word that was used for those documents remains classified information. I still can't talk about the code words or the documents, even after all those years.

[ZonkerHarris]

12. here's the answer to the thread's title since it's not in the post

Andrew speaks from personal experience here:

when you are at that level, you basically have a need to be able to access classified and TS SCI, all this stuff, all the time, 24 hours a day, when you’re at work, when you’re at home, even when you travel overseas. and the way that is done, is specialized security people on your staff, it is their sole responsibility to take that stuff, transport it, carry it, store it, protect it, and give it to you when you need it.

…

… so it is not hard for me to understand how a person like a Vice President of the United States, who certainly has a need to have access to that sort of material all the time, and staffers are constantly carrying it around, and giving it to him to get ready for the next briefing, or phone call with a world leader, or something like that. it’s following him where he goes, to hotels, to his residence, his office, that sort of thing. and it’s also not hard to see how occasionally, in this flow of hundreds, certainly thousands of pages of documents, that every once in a while, one of them gets put in the wrong folder that doesn’t have the right markings on it and can be left behind or misplaced or left in the residence or something like that.

[live love laugh]

13. Only so many paragraphs from sources are allowed here

Tried to extract the most important but thanks for filling in the blanks.