(New York) Before jumping on the plane that will take him to Austin, the capital of Texas, where he must take part in a conference on one of his favorite subjects – classified documents –, Matthew Connelly confirms some hardly believable data.
“Until 2017, the US government used to estimate how many times officials classified any document. At its peak, it was more than 90 million times a year, or three times a second,” says the Columbia University history professor.
“They stopped trying to count it, having lost confidence in their ability to estimate what the number was”, adds the one who will publish next February 14 The Declassification Enginea book about what history teaches us about America’s greatest secrets.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE EDITOR
The Declassification Engineby Matthew Connelly, will appear in bookstores on February 14.
Another staggering fact: 1.3 million people currently have a security clearance giving them access to classified documents marked “top secret”. This number does not include the millions of other people who have access to documents classified as “secret” or “confidential”.
“Is it true that 1.3 million people have access to information the disclosure of which would seriously harm national security? asks Matthew Connelly. “It just doesn’t make sense. And everyone knows it. In government, everyone will tell you that overclassification is a problem. In fact, people in the Pentagon and the CIA have been talking about it for 70 years. »
The history professor mentioned this open secret last Thursday, two days after the announcement of the discovery of classified documents in the house of former Vice President Mike Pence in Carmel, Indiana.
Like Joe Biden, Mike Pence returned the documents found in his belongings to the National Archives. And like the Democratic president, he will argue that the classified files inadvertently ended up where they shouldn’t have been, an excuse Donald Trump can no longer use.
Content often already known
This does not mean that the approximately 300 classified documents with which the former Republican president left the White House contain information whose disclosure would endanger national security, according to Matthew Connelly.
Of course, it is possible that some of these documents are explosive, who knows? But, on the whole, these files are often official records of things that people generally know.
Columbia University history professor Matthew Connelly
The history teacher gives the example of the American drone program. Even when the media (and villagers in Pakistan) could testify to the “collateral” damage caused by the bombs dropped by these devices, the American government still considered any document or information on the CIA program as “top secret”. . Hillary Clinton was also slapped on the knuckles after the discovery, among her famous emails, of exchanges between State Department officials on the drone program.
But how to explain this tendency to “overclassify” government documents that Matthew Connelly deplores? The latter advances several factors, including the number of departments and agencies authorized to classify documents.
“We now have 18 intelligence agencies. Even the Space Force has its own intelligence agency, ”he says, referring to the sixth branch of the American armed forces created by Donald Trump in 2019.
human psychology
There is also the most basic human psychology, which drives government officials to give more credibility or importance to classified information.
Matthew Connelly explains the phenomenon: “Psychologists have done studies where they randomly stamp the words “top secret” on documents. And what they found was that even experienced people tend to value these documents higher or more than other documents. Psychologically, people think secret information is more believable and more important. »
And then there is the reflex, just as human, of wanting to prevent blows. Because an employee can be punished and lose his security clearance if it is discovered that he has not classified a document that turns out to be sensitive.
Of course, the classification of certain “top secret” documents is not debatable. This is particularly the case for documents that contain information identifying human sources or describing clandestine programs (which have not yet made headlines, such as the drone program).
These “top secret” documents are often referred to as “special access programs,” a designation that has the effect of reducing the number of people who can access them. Other “top secret” documents are marked “sensitive compartmentalized information” (SCI).
In the case of the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago, 11 games were marked SCI, meaning they should only be viewed in secure government facilities. The private club in Palm Beach did not fall into this category of facilities, far from it.
But these acronyms and these details hide the essential, according to Matthew Connelly.
“Even if there were no significant secrets in these files, it is still a serious offense, because in fact what they did, and I mean especially Trump, is that they took things that belong to all of us. It is our heritage. This must be donated to the National Archives to be preserved for history. As a historian, that bothers me, and I think that’s what we should focus on more. »