The national security establishment has a serious problem with paperwork. When news broke about legal scrutiny surrounding former Trump national security adviser John Bolton and the handling of classified material, it followed a pattern we've seen play out inside the Beltway for years. Everyone acts shocked. The pundits scream about treason or political witch hunts.
It's simpler than that. The system itself is broken, and the people at the top think the rules don't apply to them.
When a high-ranking official faces allegations of mishandling state secrets, the public gets a distorted view of how Washington operates. We envision smoke-filled rooms and corporate espionage. The reality involves cardboard boxes, poorly vetted book manuscripts, and a culture of casual non-compliance.
The Classified Information Trap
Government officials handle secrets every day. It's part of the job. But a dangerous mix of arrogance and over-classification creates a environment where mistakes—or deliberate choices to bypass the rules—are inevitable.
The federal government classifies billions of pages of information every year. Experts estimate that up to 90% of it doesn't actually need to be secret. When everything is special, nothing is. Senior officials lose respect for the stamps. They take files home to prepare for memoirs. They pack up offices in a rush during administration transitions.
We saw this with David Petraeus. We saw it with various administration officials across the political spectrum. The laws governing national defense information, specifically under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, make it a crime to remove these documents without authorization.
The Department of Justice takes a hard line when it wants to send a message. When prosecutors pursue an insider, they look for intent. Did the person know they had the files? Did they try to hide them?
The Memoir Industry and National Security
The real friction usually starts when former officials decide to write books.
Every senior official wants to cash in on their time in the West Wing. Publishers pay millions for inside access. To get those checks, authors must dish out juicy details.
The government uses a pre-publication review process. It's a bureaucratic nightmare. Agencies review manuscripts to scrub out sensitive data before publication. This process causes massive fights. Authors claim the government is censoring them to protect its reputation. The government claims the authors are exposing sources and methods.
Filing legal actions or pushing for criminal pleas isn't just about punishment. It's about deterrence. The intelligence community uses these high-profile cases to terrify the rank-and-file workforce into compliance.
If a low-level analyst takes a single classified briefing home, they go to federal prison. The rules must apply to the bosses too, or the entire classification framework collapses.
How to Fix a Broken System
We can't keep relying on criminal prosecutions after the damage is already done. The entire process requires an overhaul.
First, stop classifying public information. Agencies use classification to hide embarrassing policy failures rather than legitimate security threats. If the government slashes the volume of restricted files, compliance becomes manageable.
Second, enforce strict digital tracking. Physical paper shouldn't be leaving secure facilities. Period. Modern secure reading facilities (SCIFs) have the technology to log every document. The human element—the senior aide throwing files into a briefcase—must be removed from the equation.
Pay attention to court filings in these cases. Look past the political spin. The underlying affidavits always reveal a system where convenience routinely trumps security protocol. That's the real scandal.
