Democrats were quick to pounce on the complete breakdown in standards when top Trump administration officials were caught discussing war plans on a group chat, to which a reporter was accidentally admitted.
One of those Democrats was Hillary Clinton. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Clinton talked about the hypocrisy and stupidity of the Signal leaks and how it seems that “President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws.”
It was interesting to have Clinton, of all people, opine on this. Clinton and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both committed major lapses in national security safety, and both seemed to make every excuse under the sun when caught.
Clinton eventually apologized. Hegseth is trying to speak the idea into existence that war plans aren’t war plans.
Playing politics with clearances, classified information and state secrets has become an absolute disaster, and Congress needs to step in and hold our politicians and their political appointees to the highest standards. And by that, I mean the same standards that thousands of Americans in the military and civil service are held to.
When I was a young Lance Corporal in the Marines, I had a file on my desk marked “Secret.” I got up and poked my head out of one of the doors to my office to ask another Marine a question. While I was chatting, an officer walked in through the other door and saw the file on my desk, my back turned to it. I almost lost my rank that day and was extremely lucky just to escape with enough chewings-out for a lifetime from that officer, my lieutenant, from my staff sergeant and from my sergeant.
This is a common story among many who have served either in the military or the civil service. Some of us made mistakes and there were dire consequences when it came to handling classified materials. That is why there is so much anger, frustration and confusion when political appointees get away with being reckless with national secrets.
Clinton’s opinion piece was a great message, but it was carried by the wrong person. Of course, a lot of Democrats don’t care, and that is also part of the problem. As we are seeing from the Trump administration, their spin on the Hegseth-Michael Waltz fiasco has already had some voters rushing to defend the indefensible by claiming that it isn’t that serious.
This partisanship is already frustrating when you are dealing with corruption, crimes, scandals and lying. But it is on a whole other level when you realize that these politicians don’t understand that what they did absolutely put the country in danger.
When Barack Obama became president, he famously refused to give up his Blackberry and his incoming administration tried to find a way for him to keep using it. After modifications were made and rules set, Obama got to keep his phone. Of course, they had to ensure that the leader of the free world wasn’t using an unsecured device, but it seems that the security protocols have failed to keep up with an ever-evolving world of smartphones, social media, encryption apps and nefarious hackers.
We know that, with everyone from the Russians to the North Koreans to dark-web hackers looking for valuable information to steal and sell, this fear has been a part of our lives for some time. But the conflict of having a smartphone or easier access to communications has led to serious lapses that everyone wants to blame solely on those in the opposite party.
The use of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities seems to be an inconvenience for politicians, except when they use them as a political stunt, like the one disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) pulled. Clinton’s emails, despite her repeated assurance that none contained classified materials, did in fact contain classified materials. She claimed some type of ignorance of the markings, and she might have been truthful in not knowing, but that doesn’t absolve the fact that it was classified.
Hegseth and crew have tried to pin blame on everyone from Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to aides, and finally settled on arguing that the obvious war plans were not in fact war plans. That last straw should break the camel’s back, but in the world we live in, Congress will just stir up anger on one side or downplay the gravity of the situation on the other.
When I applied, I had to go through so many steps just to get the lowest clearance one could get. And even then, as a young lance corporal, the one thing that tripped me up was that I had a bad credit score. I had no idea I even had a credit score until a federal investigator showed me a printout. I also saw an officer plug an iPod into an computer on a classified network to charge it and promptly lose the iPod to the government.
I had another officer run into a problem renewing a clearance because she had married a foreign national. I could go on, but like any military veteran or civil servant can tell you, these things need to happen.
Congress needs to find bipartisanship on this issue by updating and enforcing standards for politicians and political appointees when it comes to handling classified information. More importantly, they need to have strict and enforceable punishments for violating such standards, whether it applies to a Clinton or to Hegseth.
In the meantime, every country, group or individual with the capacity to attack American security assets on a cyber level, just got a tremendous boost of confidence. It seems that our own elected politicians and political appointees — the very ones tasked with keeping us safe — instead keep making it easier for the bad guys to steal secrets, spy on us and cause overall harm to the U.S.
Jos Joseph is a master’s candidate at the Harvard Extension School at Harvard University. He is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and lives in Anaheim, Calif.
