Op-Ed
When secrecy gets out of hand
Far too many government documents are wrongly classified top secret. The White House needs to sanction those who inappropriately classify information and take greater care in what it labels secret.
By J. William Leonard
August 10, 2011
<snip>
Drake, once a high official at the NSA, was prosecuted because, as the
government put it, he was found in "unauthorized possession of a
document relating to the national defense, namely, a classified
e-mail."
The charges stem from Drake's leaking of information to a journalist.
Drake acknowledges that he approached a Baltimore Sun reporter with
information, but he insists that he never offered any classified
information. "I went to a reporter with a few key things: fraud, waste
and abuse," he said in an interview with the New Yorker.
Having served as an expert witness for Drake's defense, I have read the
email in question, and it clearly does not meet even the minimal
criteria for classification, namely that it "reasonably could be
expected to result in damage to the national security."
Various government officials involved in the Drake case have made the
point that individual employees do not get to decide on their own that
information they have access to should be declassified; that is the
government's role.
Still, government officials are obligated to follow the standards set
forth by the president through a 2009 executive order. They are not
allowed to exceed its prohibitions and limitations in deciding what to
classify. Classifying information that should not be kept secret can be
just as harmful to the national interest as unauthorized disclosures of
appropriately classified information.
*In fact, the executive order governing classification treats
unauthorized disclosures of classified information and inappropriate
classification of information as equal violations, subjecting
perpetrators to comparable administrative or other sanctions in
accordance with applicable law.*
But while government workers, members of the military and government
contractors are routinely disciplined or prosecuted for unauthorized
disclosures, I know of no case in which an official was sanctioned for
inappropriately classifying information.
The Obama administration, which has criminally prosecuted more leakers
of purportedly classified information than all previous administrations
combined, needs to stop and assess the way the government classifies
information in the first place.
<end excerpt>
Michael