Time To Reboot Obama’s Hidden Secrets EO?

Can one man’s “classified” doc be another’s “fairy tale”? Time to update laws protecting “national security secrets” so they don’t excuse political activists in govt who target opponents then hide behind catch-all shield?

The issue of course comes to the forefront with the FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago … with the AG’s explicit ok. You may recall that Obama’s Presidential Executive Order 13526 back in 2009 pretty much summarized what can & can’t be “classified.” And it basically promises to balance the public’s need to know and the bureaucracy’s need to protect our national security, including the need to not “embarrass” the USA. Of course. So far, so good. But, that EO also warns that nothing should be classified if there’s a “significant doubt” about the need to do so. And, historically, there’s arguably been the rub. Nothing seems to trigger that “significant doubt” any more in the classification process so that just about anything could embarrass the nation and gets “classified”.

Think of some pols we keep electing to Congress. Embarrassing, huh? Enough to classify everything said or written about them? A criticism of a sensitive French Frog might also be embarrassing to someone somewhere. What if a national security advisor is photographed walking onto the WH portico stark naked? No doubt, VERY embarrassing. So too would be No. 45 keeping emails or memos of Never Trumpers inside the Swamp gathering bogus intelligence on a Russian Collusion theory that’s allegedly traceable to the Hillary Clinton campaign & DNC. But, then, don’t our foreign enemies already know there are goofs among our elites? Maybe time to rebalance the public’s interest in knowing the truth, too?

Davd Soul