One Small Voice: We need sensitive documents rules

by Lynne Mandaville

There are a lot of things that I’m bothered by about all this secret document stuff that’s been taking up so much talking-head time lately.

I’m horrified that our former president felt it was all right to take with him boxes and boxes of classified information when he left office.

I’m upset that he thinks it was no big deal to rifle through it and leave sensitive documents lying around where it could be seen, or read, or taken or who knows what else.

I’m upset that when he was asked to return any documents he might have in his possession, he lied and said he had nothing.

I’m upset that after he was compelled to return documents, he lied about having still more of them in his possession.

And after having been given repeated opportunities to voluntarily deliver remaining items to the national archives, I’m upset that he all but dared authorities to conduct a raid and search his home/resort that turned up many questionable results, like empty folders marked “classified” and “top secret.”

It upsets me that after all that happened, Republican members of Congress declined to so much as criticize Donald Trump’s seeming contempt for the proper handling of files that could compromise national security.

And it upsets me that after months of the media stewing about how little regard our former president had for mishandled secret documents, it came to light that our current president also had at least a couple dozen classified documents in his possession and had had them for a long time.

Though he admitted to having such sensitive documents, it upsets me that he downplayed the importance of it, attributing it to careless packing up of things when he left his job as VP.

There was some comfort in that the current president seemed to be contrite about the sloppiness that resulted in his having had classified and top-secret information at his offices and in his home.

And it was also reassuring that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s case in addition to the prosecutor he appointed to look into the Trump affair.

But more than anything, I think, I was most disturbed by a bigger picture issue, specifically that there seems to be no established system in place to account for and distribute classified and top-secret documents for members of the highest office in the land.  In criminology parlance, there seems to be no approved chain-of-custody protocol for sensitive federal documents.

In case readers of this column aren’t aware, I spent 29 years as a professional librarian.

An important part of that job was the responsible inventorying of library records and the contents of the various collections housed in the public library.

There was a detailed, confidential system in place to account for items borrowed by the public.  The system included knowing who had what, when it was expected back, when it had been out longer that the prescribed borrowing period, and how the library was to go about regaining custody of those publicly owned items.

So, for the life of me, I can’t imagine why there is not a similar system in place for the care and recovery of sensitive federal documents, especially if said documents are germane to national security.

I do understand that a sitting president can request and hold any federal documents he or she desires, and that a president can declassify anything he or she wants to.

What I don’t understand is why such items cannot be inventoried by the national archives and accounted for when a president or a vice president has requested and taken temporary possession of them?

The exact nature of the item doesn’t have to be exposed, just that a particular file has been removed from the archives by a specified individual on a specified date, the exact classification of that document when it was removed, and when its return should be expected.

Thus, there would be no question when a file or group of files had been gone for a protracted period, or when a document or massive group of documents had gone missing.

This entire controversy over a former president’s alleged misappropriation of sensitive information could have been avoided or accurately determined when discovered.

And the discovery of allegedly misplaced or sloppily gathered files would have been found out by a routine demand to update the status of “borrowed” documents.

I think it’s fair to say that many citizens know presidents are privy to files and documents from their tenures which they use to write their memoirs after leaving office.

What it seems we don’t know is that the files and documents they assume possession of are not subject to chain of custody rules or regulations!

The fact that such a reasonable and overdue accountability seems not to exist does not excuse either former President Trump or current President Biden for sloppy handling of the many and varied documents in question.

I do expect more of them in their roles as chief executives, and I expect them to charge their staff with greater responsibility for any items borrowed from the archives for use in the conduct of routine business.

To my way of thinking, the nation has a much larger problem than the alarming cases of two presidents with questionable possession of top-secret materials that belong to all of us.