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How Classified Information Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there on the download,
0:18
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you should Know the podcast, the
0:22
Speaker 1: top Secret edition. Yes, exactly what you should know is
0:26
Speaker 1: decided by us. That's right, we give clearance. Clarence, well,
0:31
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I wouldn't have put that one together,
0:34
Speaker 1: but that's great. Thanks, So Chuck, we're talking about classified information,
0:39
Speaker 1: top secret information. A lot of people call it by
0:42
Speaker 1: especially if you're twelve years older younger, but it's actually
0:45
Speaker 1: a real thing. That's like a real designation top secret, which,
0:49
Speaker 1: by the way, I went back and watched that movie
0:51
Speaker 1: again for the first time in years, and it is hilarious. Yeah.
0:56
Speaker 1: I just made an airplane reference in Top Secret? Is
0:59
Speaker 1: uh saying that it's a Zuckers, right, Zuckers. Yeah. I
1:01
Speaker 1: think they worked with somebody different that time. I'm not
1:04
Speaker 1: sing what capacity, but the Zuckers were involved for sure.
1:08
Speaker 1: The Balcomer. That documentary on him, it is fantastic, by
1:11
Speaker 1: the way, I've heard, I have not yet to watch it.
1:14
Speaker 1: We just got through a made Have you seen made
1:17
Speaker 1: haven't seen made. It's a even after and you just like,
1:22
Speaker 1: I wonder what bad thing is going to happen to
1:24
Speaker 1: her next? I know something bad is going to It
1:26
Speaker 1: really wears you down like that for sure, but it's good.
1:28
Speaker 1: It's worth watching. Well, since we're on it with tv REX.
1:32
Speaker 1: Before we get going, I've been watching Station eleven and
1:34
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite shows in years. Station eleven.
1:37
Speaker 1: What's it on HBO? It is a from a novel,
1:41
Speaker 1: a post apocalyptic virus actually pandemic weirdly, but it's more
1:48
Speaker 1: on the order of like of the Earth Died and
1:52
Speaker 1: but it's not the Road. It's it's more interesting, it's
1:57
Speaker 1: more hopeful and artistic. Cool. I'll check it out. Did
1:59
Speaker 1: you ever see The Leftovers? I think is what they
2:02
Speaker 1: were called. Well, what's funny is we were watching that too.
2:05
Speaker 1: We just started that because we were in that groove
2:08
Speaker 1: and we never saw The Leftovers, and I heard it
2:10
Speaker 1: was really good kind of and even got better through
2:12
Speaker 1: the years. I envy you. I wish I could see
2:15
Speaker 1: The Leftovers again for the first time. It's that. I'm
2:18
Speaker 1: really excited, dude. It's very good. All right, Now we
2:21
Speaker 1: should get to it because this is dense, so we're
2:23
Speaker 1: talking about Yes, it is super dense. I mean this Uh.
2:26
Speaker 1: We asked some help from Ed Grabanowski the grab Stir
2:30
Speaker 1: and he turned into James Missioner novel. It is so dense.
2:33
Speaker 1: Every paragraph is really dense. UM. And it's it's there's
2:37
Speaker 1: it's inevitable, Like just researching this one, there's so much
2:41
Speaker 1: to just go and read and so many rabbit holes
2:44
Speaker 1: to go down, because what we're talking about is really
2:47
Speaker 1: like simple concept on its face, Like there are secrets
2:52
Speaker 1: that like any government would not want other governments or
2:56
Speaker 1: other people are sometimes even their own people to know.
3:00
Speaker 1: It would just make the functioning of that government that
3:02
Speaker 1: much harder. Um, it might make the country vulnerable to attack.
3:07
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons why you would not want
3:09
Speaker 1: to share all of your business. So you want to
3:11
Speaker 1: classify information based on how damaging it could be to
3:16
Speaker 1: national security, and then you just decide who has clearance
3:20
Speaker 1: to see that those various classifications of information. That's it,
3:24
Speaker 1: that's classified information. But in practice, in reality, it's such
3:29
Speaker 1: a behemoth concept that is so fraught with problems, that
3:35
Speaker 1: is so often completely and utterly anti democratic. Um. And
3:40
Speaker 1: then it's just so bureaucratically layer that it is extremely
3:44
Speaker 1: it's an extremely dense topic. I just want to make
3:47
Speaker 1: sure we added a good extra three minutes onto this
3:50
Speaker 1: episode with that. Well, I think you know. The good
3:53
Speaker 1: news is the history can be condensed really easily into
3:58
Speaker 1: They had state secrets back in ancient times too, but
4:01
Speaker 1: back then it was a lot easier to keep secrets
4:03
Speaker 1: because there was no technology and there was no bureaucracy generally,
4:08
Speaker 1: So if the autocratic or semi autocratic leader said it
4:13
Speaker 1: was a secret, then it was a secret, and that
4:15
Speaker 1: was kind of the end of it. Um, things changed
4:18
Speaker 1: because of technology and because of bureaucracy, and because of
4:23
Speaker 1: the development of nuclear weapons when there was truly something
4:27
Speaker 1: so kind of world ending at stake that things needed
4:31
Speaker 1: to be ratcheted up. And this all started with a
4:36
Speaker 1: series of acts and even more so a series of
4:41
Speaker 1: presidential executive orders over the years to really sort of
4:44
Speaker 1: put these executive orders in place to vaguely say who
4:47
Speaker 1: can know what and how we're gonna do it. And
4:49
Speaker 1: then the acts come into play to say how are
4:51
Speaker 1: we going to punish people who do it the wrong
4:52
Speaker 1: way or don't do it? Yeah, and um, it's like
4:55
Speaker 1: you said, the executive orders are where the kind of
4:58
Speaker 1: classification and how thing are classified, how they become declassified,
5:02
Speaker 1: how that got all sorted out. But Congress has largely
5:05
Speaker 1: been left to figure out how to punish people who
5:07
Speaker 1: transgress against those those um sharing that information. And that
5:13
Speaker 1: whole thing started with the Defense Secrets Act of nineteen eleven, appropriately,
5:17
Speaker 1: which evolved into the Espionage Act. But you hit you.
5:21
Speaker 1: You use the word um that I think is really um,
5:24
Speaker 1: really important and really describes one of the big problems
5:27
Speaker 1: with the classification system in the United States, which is um,
5:31
Speaker 1: it's vague. The descriptions, the explanations, the rules are very
5:36
Speaker 1: vague and nebulous, and so there's a lot of room
5:39
Speaker 1: for objectivity, and there's a lot of room to just say,
5:43
Speaker 1: I don't really know what this is, so I'm just
5:45
Speaker 1: gonna put it on the highest possible level of secrecy
5:48
Speaker 1: that I can. Yeah, this is interesting because I think
5:51
Speaker 1: the vagueness is definitely a problem that leads to part
5:54
Speaker 1: of the bigger problem with classification and over classification, which
5:58
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a lot about. But I also think
6:01
Speaker 1: that in a lot of cases like this, vagueness like
6:04
Speaker 1: this is one area where human uh what was the
6:07
Speaker 1: word he used? Error objectivity where human subjectivity kind of
6:15
Speaker 1: has to come into play. Uh. And this is jumping
6:19
Speaker 1: ahead a little bit, but like, as far as you
6:21
Speaker 1: know what to classify something, like the way they decide
6:24
Speaker 1: that is how bad will it hurt America? Is it grave?
6:27
Speaker 1: Danger um? What was the second one? Um? Sort of
6:32
Speaker 1: like medium grave and then just danger and that's and
6:37
Speaker 1: it's you know, people can have complained that like, well
6:39
Speaker 1: that's not really spelled out, But I don't know if
6:41
Speaker 1: you can codify that to a t like of how
6:45
Speaker 1: dangerous something is. I don't know. I believe that human
6:49
Speaker 1: subjectivity has to come into play. I'm not defending over classification,
6:53
Speaker 1: but I don't know. This is one of those things
6:55
Speaker 1: that can be bureaucracized and legislated to the to the
7:00
Speaker 1: nth degree. You know, well, it's that's ironic because the
7:03
Speaker 1: whole reason this exists like this is because of bureaucracy.
7:07
Speaker 1: You know, yes, but you you make a good point,
7:09
Speaker 1: and I think that is ultimately the reason the driving
7:12
Speaker 1: force behind keeping things vague, because you couldn't possibly describe
7:16
Speaker 1: every situation and say, well, if this happens, then it
7:20
Speaker 1: would cause grave danger and you want to make a
7:22
Speaker 1: top secret, etcetera. Right, But like you said, the Espionage
7:27
Speaker 1: Act in nineteen seventeen was brought upon by the advent
7:32
Speaker 1: of World War One, and this basically um like they
7:36
Speaker 1: also they already storted from the nineteen eleven version had
7:39
Speaker 1: the vague terms that said, you know, you can't provide
7:42
Speaker 1: this information related to national defense to people who shouldn't
7:45
Speaker 1: have it. Uh, started out vague, but this is where
7:48
Speaker 1: the teeth came in as far as punishment goes, because
7:51
Speaker 1: it was during wartime, so it was super harsh. Yeah.
7:54
Speaker 1: I remember we've talked before about Eugene Debs, who was
7:57
Speaker 1: the Socialist candidate for president in the can't remember what election,
8:01
Speaker 1: but around World War One, and he ran his campaign
8:04
Speaker 1: from prison because he was put in prison for basically
8:07
Speaker 1: denouncing the US war effort during World War One. And
8:10
Speaker 1: you could not speak out against the United States military,
8:14
Speaker 1: the United States itself, the United States Constitution. You couldn't
8:17
Speaker 1: say anything critical about it or you could be put
8:20
Speaker 1: in prison. And people were put in prison because of it.
8:22
Speaker 1: And they walk that stuff back, the First Amendment violations back.
8:25
Speaker 1: But the point is is a big part of it was.
8:28
Speaker 1: It grew out of this idea that if you share
8:31
Speaker 1: state secrets you can be seriously harshly punished like the
8:35
Speaker 1: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's were. They were actually put to
8:39
Speaker 1: death under the Espionage Act and it's still around today. Um,
8:43
Speaker 1: Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, Edward Snowden, all of them were
8:47
Speaker 1: prosecuted under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen, which basically says,
8:52
Speaker 1: if you share any state any classified information, you can
8:56
Speaker 1: be severely punished and lose years of your life in
8:59
Speaker 1: prison or again ultimately put to death. I'm not sure
9:01
Speaker 1: if that's still on the books, but it very well maybe.
9:04
Speaker 1: So we should also talk about this other sort of
9:07
Speaker 1: precursor to what we have today, the system we have today,
9:11
Speaker 1: which was in eighteen sixty nine, and this addresses the
9:14
Speaker 1: technology kind of for the first time. Um, the War Department. Uh,
9:19
Speaker 1: they brought out General Order number thirty five, so cute
9:22
Speaker 1: back then, number thirty five ledge. Uh. What they basically said, Hey,
9:29
Speaker 1: there are cameras now that exist, so you can't be
9:32
Speaker 1: in a fort, uh and take pictures of the fort
9:36
Speaker 1: or above the fort or around the fort, like no
9:38
Speaker 1: pictures basically anymore. And so they're acknowledging technology for the
9:43
Speaker 1: first time. And the other big thing was this is
9:45
Speaker 1: a peace time move, so it's the first time like
9:47
Speaker 1: we weren't at war and sort of putting these rules
9:49
Speaker 1: into place. Yeah, because there are rules about that kind
9:52
Speaker 1: of thing, like even dating back to the Revolutionary Army
9:54
Speaker 1: and the Continental Congress about this stuff. But this was
9:57
Speaker 1: a that was a peace time one, and that was
9:58
Speaker 1: significant because the classification system is a peace time and
10:02
Speaker 1: now largely civilian system, but it found its roots in
10:06
Speaker 1: the military quite rightfully. I mean even still today, even
10:09
Speaker 1: people who are highly critical of the American classified information
10:14
Speaker 1: system say it should basically be kept to military maneuvers,
10:20
Speaker 1: maybe state department negotiations, and even then it should be
10:23
Speaker 1: a very short time. But the general consensus is, yes,
10:27
Speaker 1: you would not want anyone understanding or knowing what your
10:30
Speaker 1: military was doing basically. Right. The first time that they
10:35
Speaker 1: sort of or at least somebody started to say the
10:38
Speaker 1: word over classification and and the fact that they needed
10:42
Speaker 1: a sort of a tiered system was Brigadier General Arthur Murray,
10:47
Speaker 1: who was Chief of Artillery at the time. He wrote
10:50
Speaker 1: a letter to the Secretary of War that basically said, listen,
10:52
Speaker 1: all we've got is this one classification. It's confidential, and
10:56
Speaker 1: they're stamping everything confidential even if it shouldn't be confidential,
11:00
Speaker 1: and that just you know, if if everything is being
11:02
Speaker 1: stamped this way, then it loses its meaning. So we
11:05
Speaker 1: have to And they didn't call it over classification at
11:08
Speaker 1: the time. Really, I think that was just sort of
11:10
Speaker 1: the first person to mention this. But he said, what
11:13
Speaker 1: we really need is a tiered system of how classified
11:17
Speaker 1: it should be. And they're already doing this in Britain. Uh,
11:20
Speaker 1: they have their four tiered system for your eyes only only,
11:25
Speaker 1: Moonraker Live and Let Die and gold remember no gold
11:32
Speaker 1: member Old Finger gold Member was a good one. Now
11:35
Speaker 1: for your eyes only is the actual classification. Then you
11:38
Speaker 1: have for the information of commission officers only for official
11:42
Speaker 1: use only and not for publication. And the chiefs of
11:46
Speaker 1: Staff said, you know what, I think it's a great idea.
11:48
Speaker 1: This four tiered system is probably something we should use,
11:52
Speaker 1: but not these not the way you're doing it. We
11:54
Speaker 1: need to be able to kind of make this up
11:56
Speaker 1: as we go to It seems way too tea and
11:58
Speaker 1: crumpets stuffs, so we need to I'm up with something
12:00
Speaker 1: else well, I think too rigid. It sounds like they
12:03
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to decide be a little nimble
12:06
Speaker 1: with how they classified things as they went. Yeah, because
12:09
Speaker 1: they the system they initially came up with was to
12:12
Speaker 1: just basically put at the preface of say like a
12:14
Speaker 1: manual or a document that says, this is only for
12:19
Speaker 1: you know, this division or this this um armed services,
12:23
Speaker 1: or this type of officer, this whatever, and then it
12:27
Speaker 1: should not be it should not be given to anybody
12:29
Speaker 1: else beyond them, um. And you could conceivably just do
12:33
Speaker 1: that for every single document. But the problem is that
12:37
Speaker 1: this was stuff that they were talking about in nine
12:39
Speaker 1: seven in America was still fairly small federal government wise.
12:44
Speaker 1: I mean it was, it was growing big time after
12:46
Speaker 1: the Civil War, but compared to today, like the bureaucracy
12:49
Speaker 1: was just nothing like it is. And so you could
12:52
Speaker 1: conceivably do that in the armed forces. But as as
12:55
Speaker 1: things grew and the bureaucracy grew and the government crew, um,
12:59
Speaker 1: it became impossible to come up with this kind of
13:01
Speaker 1: thing for every single document, and much easier to just
13:04
Speaker 1: say this is this category, this is that category, and
13:07
Speaker 1: this is that category, right, and those we should mention
13:11
Speaker 1: as a little sidebar. There was even one debate for
13:14
Speaker 1: a short time where they were coming up with the
13:17
Speaker 1: different classification levels where they wondered if they should even
13:19
Speaker 1: make up words. There weren't words, I guess to make
13:23
Speaker 1: it even more confidential or confusing. But then they said,
13:26
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, this is this is more confusing
13:29
Speaker 1: to us even and we don't want someone you know,
13:33
Speaker 1: high on the totem pole which really means low, uh,
13:37
Speaker 1: not understanding what this word even means, and then making
13:40
Speaker 1: a mistake because of that. Yeah, so like, let's use
13:42
Speaker 1: real word. Private piles like red turtle doesn't sound very important.
13:46
Speaker 1: I'm sure I can tell everybody about that, that's right.
13:50
Speaker 1: So when you say private pile, do you mean gilmer
13:52
Speaker 1: pile or full metal jacket? Take your pick. Okay, so
13:55
Speaker 1: I'm both doing that. Should we take a break, Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about
14:01
Speaker 1: the atomic age and how that played in right after this. Okay, chuck.
14:26
Speaker 1: So it was all just kind of willy nilly and
14:29
Speaker 1: the Armed Forces of America we're figuring out how to
14:32
Speaker 1: set up their own classification system, and it was actually
14:35
Speaker 1: supported and codified starting with one of those executive orders
14:41
Speaker 1: that came from President Franklin Roosevelt EOE, and it basically said,
14:48
Speaker 1: everything the military is doing is right. Um, they've got
14:51
Speaker 1: some great terms over there, we've got some secret, we
14:54
Speaker 1: got restricted, we've got confidential. Let's keep going with that.
14:57
Speaker 1: And it just kind of was it was. It was
15:00
Speaker 1: mainly coming out of the military, and the military was
15:02
Speaker 1: figuring it out. But then, like you said, the atomic
15:05
Speaker 1: age came along and the stakes became exponentially higher because
15:11
Speaker 1: we had different countries conceivably working on an atomic weapon,
15:15
Speaker 1: the likes of which had never been seen, the destructiveness
15:18
Speaker 1: of which had never been seen ever in the history
15:21
Speaker 1: of humanity. And like its just things got real and
15:25
Speaker 1: the need for secrecy got real, so much so that
15:28
Speaker 1: even before the Manhattan Projects started, the scientists that were
15:31
Speaker 1: working on atomic research, we're keeping their research secret to themselves,
15:37
Speaker 1: like by their own by their own like consensus, Like
15:40
Speaker 1: they're like the public, we can't we have to be
15:42
Speaker 1: careful publishing papers about this. Yeah, I think that's interesting
15:46
Speaker 1: that they just sort of knew to shut up about it,
15:49
Speaker 1: even I would imagine within their own families. That was
15:53
Speaker 1: probably back in the day where they were like daddy
15:55
Speaker 1: doesn't talk about what he doesn't work kind of stuff.
15:58
Speaker 1: And finally, when the Manhattan Project, the man i Hatta
16:02
Speaker 1: Project excuse me, officially got going, there was a dude,
16:06
Speaker 1: one one lone man, General Leslie Groves that kind of
16:09
Speaker 1: controlled the set of rules for secrecy and things got
16:15
Speaker 1: a little more codified at that point through him basically saying,
16:20
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna use whatever means I have under
16:22
Speaker 1: the law and even outside the law to make sure
16:24
Speaker 1: this stuff stays a secret. Um. But it wasn't until
16:27
Speaker 1: these executive orders started rolling in. I think they called
16:30
Speaker 1: stuff like restricted data and stuff like that former restricted data,
16:34
Speaker 1: which actually was the progenitor of what would become declassification.
16:40
Speaker 1: But uh, it's you know, it was still a little
16:43
Speaker 1: willy nilly in that it took the these executive orders
16:47
Speaker 1: and eventually Congress to really make this stuff law. And
16:50
Speaker 1: at the time, even within the Manhattan Project, it was
16:53
Speaker 1: still like this one guy saying, here, we can't we
16:55
Speaker 1: gotta keep her to secret or I'm gonna do something
16:58
Speaker 1: bad to you. Well, he was like the uh, like
17:01
Speaker 1: the ultimate project manager. He was the sole person on
17:04
Speaker 1: the planet who understood everything that was going on with
17:09
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. Even the top scientists didn't fully have
17:12
Speaker 1: like the entire picture. Only Leslie Groves did. Um. He
17:15
Speaker 1: wouldn't let some of like the top physicists working on
17:18
Speaker 1: the bomb talk to each other about their work. There
17:21
Speaker 1: was a tremendous amount of compartmentalization. Mail was read and censored.
17:26
Speaker 1: There's just tons of stuff that this guy was basically saying,
17:28
Speaker 1: we have to do these extreme measures to keep this
17:31
Speaker 1: under wraps. And once we enter the atomic age, you
17:33
Speaker 1: can't go back. So that his ideas about the secrecy needed,
17:38
Speaker 1: uh and the measures you needed to take to protect
17:40
Speaker 1: atomic secrets eventually became the the the inspiration for how
17:46
Speaker 1: America's classified information system like that was created. He he
17:51
Speaker 1: created it inadvertently. He just basically came up with such
17:54
Speaker 1: a great tight set of rules that when the Atomic
17:58
Speaker 1: Energy Act of ninety forty six was created and they
18:01
Speaker 1: took basically atomic research and put it to like a
18:05
Speaker 1: government funded civilian research from the military, they said, basically
18:10
Speaker 1: everything grows was doing, We're just going to keep doing
18:12
Speaker 1: that and codify it. Yeah, and you know how I
18:15
Speaker 1: mentioned that he kind of inadvertently created declassification with the
18:18
Speaker 1: former restricted data. Uh. He also inadvertently created the derivative
18:24
Speaker 1: classified designation, which is basically, if part of this project
18:29
Speaker 1: we're working on is classified, then it's all classified. Um.
18:34
Speaker 1: And you know, we'll get into the different layers of
18:36
Speaker 1: classification later, but it was it was like, you know,
18:38
Speaker 1: this whole thing is a big secret. It's not just
18:41
Speaker 1: you can't talk about this one thing, and everything else
18:43
Speaker 1: is just uh, you know whatever talk about in the
18:46
Speaker 1: country club. It's no big deal. Um. And so after that,
18:50
Speaker 1: so you've got um, Congress setting the punishment for sharing
18:54
Speaker 1: state secrets UM. And then you've got Leslie Groves coming
18:57
Speaker 1: up with the kind of the framework for how to
19:00
Speaker 1: how to carry out a classified information system and protect information.
19:04
Speaker 1: And then you've got the President's a succession of presidents
19:07
Speaker 1: starting with Roosevelt and then picked up by Truman in
19:09
Speaker 1: ninety one, issuing executive orders that really kind of spell
19:13
Speaker 1: out how these classification systems are meant to work. And
19:17
Speaker 1: Truman at a top secret the top secret category in
19:20
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. And then the big one, UM was
19:23
Speaker 1: Executive Order one oh two ninety UM, which was also
19:28
Speaker 1: issued in in nineteen fifty one that said, hey, it's
19:31
Speaker 1: not just the military who has secrets that they need
19:33
Speaker 1: to keep. Basically, all of the Executive Branch needs to
19:36
Speaker 1: be able to to create secret and top secret information classifications.
19:42
Speaker 1: And he extended that power to classify information to UM
19:47
Speaker 1: basically every agency there was, including like the Department of
19:50
Speaker 1: Agriculture and the Department of Education UM to create to
19:54
Speaker 1: say Nope, this is classified, this can't be this can't
19:57
Speaker 1: be released. Yeah. They had to walk that back a
19:59
Speaker 1: couple of years later a little bit because people were
20:02
Speaker 1: worried that it was too broad and that too many
20:04
Speaker 1: people were classifying things and had access to it. So
20:08
Speaker 1: they reduced the number of agencies UH in nineteen fifty
20:12
Speaker 1: three with another executive order and then what we ended
20:16
Speaker 1: up with was top secret, secret, confidential, UH and restricted
20:22
Speaker 1: And should we should we talk a little bit about
20:25
Speaker 1: what you sent over, like how it literally works in practice. Yeah,
20:29
Speaker 1: I think that's a good spot for it. All right.
20:32
Speaker 1: So if you get a document and you you know,
20:35
Speaker 1: let's say one day you get your through a FOIA
20:38
Speaker 1: requests which we'll talk about later Free to Information Act.
20:42
Speaker 1: If you get your hands on a document and it says,
20:44
Speaker 1: you know, uh, it might have the title right there
20:48
Speaker 1: with the letter you saying that it's unclassified at this point.
20:53
Speaker 1: But with that, yeah, within the document, you're gonna have
20:58
Speaker 1: different paragraphs, are gonna have designate aations, Like one might
21:00
Speaker 1: say secret, one might say confidential, one might say top secret,
21:04
Speaker 1: And this whole thing rolls up to its initial top classification.
21:10
Speaker 1: So if part of it is top secret, then all
21:12
Speaker 1: of it is top secret. But I guess the deal
21:15
Speaker 1: is is for future declassification, they want those sub designations
21:19
Speaker 1: in there, is that, right, Yeah, to make it easier
21:22
Speaker 1: for the person you know, um sending the document out
21:26
Speaker 1: for a foyer requested blackout. You know, any any paragraphs
21:30
Speaker 1: that are secret confidential because part of me is like,
21:34
Speaker 1: if it's all rolls up to top secret, if one
21:36
Speaker 1: part is top secret, then what's the point of even
21:39
Speaker 1: subcategorizing it? But that doesn't make sense. So in this case,
21:42
Speaker 1: so you said that, they might have the letter you
21:44
Speaker 1: next to the title. In that case, they're saying, you
21:47
Speaker 1: can acknowledge the existence of this document and the title
21:51
Speaker 1: of this document, but the document itself is considered top secret,
21:55
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't No one would be able to see
21:57
Speaker 1: it without a top secret clearance, right, And then depending
22:01
Speaker 1: on what agency here with. They also have different terms.
22:04
Speaker 1: I think the State Department says sensitive but unclassified. Uh,
22:08
Speaker 1: the d O D and Homeland Security might use for
22:11
Speaker 1: official use only uh. And I guess the Parks Department
22:14
Speaker 1: says it would be a whole lot cooler if you
22:16
Speaker 1: didn't mention this is that from parks and wrecks from
22:21
Speaker 1: my brain just now. Oh, I liked it a lot, Chuck,
22:23
Speaker 1: I like my friend. So, um, those those ones you
22:27
Speaker 1: just said, sensitive but unclassified, these basically made up ones.
22:30
Speaker 1: Those are to keep people like you and me from
22:32
Speaker 1: being able to see this stuff. Which is a big problem,
22:36
Speaker 1: as we'll see with with classified information and over classification,
22:39
Speaker 1: is that the public is basically looped out by this
22:41
Speaker 1: whole thing, but they have a stamp. This is no
22:43
Speaker 1: dopes right, no grass, no forget so. Um. So, one
22:51
Speaker 1: of the other things that we should say is that
22:53
Speaker 1: there be you talked about derivative classification, which we'll talk
22:57
Speaker 1: more about in a second. There's also original classification, and
23:00
Speaker 1: an original classification says this new thing that we're talking about.
23:05
Speaker 1: Let's say somebody comes up with a new gun, right,
23:09
Speaker 1: somebody along the way will say, we don't want anybody
23:13
Speaker 1: to know about this gun. We certainly don't want to
23:15
Speaker 1: know how it works. So I'm going to deem this
23:17
Speaker 1: gun top secret. There's only a handful of people in
23:21
Speaker 1: the country you can do that, and it sounds like
23:23
Speaker 1: a lot, But when you really step back and think
23:25
Speaker 1: about it, Um, it's not that many federal officials typically
23:29
Speaker 1: work in the executive branch. Um can can declare something
23:35
Speaker 1: originally classified. That's just the original classification. Yeah, and just
23:40
Speaker 1: quickly by the numbers that's people can classify. But uh,
23:45
Speaker 1: and this is numbers, But more than four million people
23:48
Speaker 1: have security clearances, including one point three million with top
23:52
Speaker 1: secret clearance. So those people, those other four four million
23:57
Speaker 1: people who can see class of information, they're the ones
24:02
Speaker 1: usually who make derivative classifications. So when they start, when
24:06
Speaker 1: they come along and they say they're tasked with creating
24:10
Speaker 1: a handbook or an instruction manual on using that new
24:13
Speaker 1: gun that just got a top secret classification. When they're
24:17
Speaker 1: making that manual because they're talking about a top secret gun,
24:22
Speaker 1: that manual is top secret. Yes, that's a derivative classification. Now,
24:27
Speaker 1: let's say you're emailing your coworker about the progress on
24:32
Speaker 1: the manual, that email is top secret because you're talking
24:36
Speaker 1: about a manual that's top secret because it's talking about
24:39
Speaker 1: the thing that was this gun that was originally deemed
24:42
Speaker 1: top secret. Now, if you're talking about millions of people
24:45
Speaker 1: with access to secret and top secret information and they're
24:49
Speaker 1: all talking to one another trying to make all this
24:51
Speaker 1: stuff work, you can see how quickly that derivative classific
24:56
Speaker 1: is classified information can explode exponentially. In an fact, it
25:00
Speaker 1: actually has over the years. Yeah, I mean, I guess
25:04
Speaker 1: we could go through them. Are you talking about the
25:05
Speaker 1: overclassification numbers? Yeah, yeah, so, Uh, the Security the Information
25:12
Speaker 1: Security Oversight Office reported, uh, six years ago that cabinet
25:16
Speaker 1: level agencies alone uh this is not the military, right,
25:23
Speaker 1: classified more than fifty five million documents. And then the
25:26
Speaker 1: Public Interest Declassification Board estimates that the intelligence community just
25:32
Speaker 1: by themselves classifies multiple peta bytes of data every year,
25:37
Speaker 1: which is about a petabyte is about eighty six billion
25:40
Speaker 1: pages billion pages of either text or you know. It
25:45
Speaker 1: points out a lot of that could be photographs and videos,
25:47
Speaker 1: but the point is lots and lots and lots and
25:50
Speaker 1: lots and lots of stuff. Yes, and that's just the
25:53
Speaker 1: classification there's an entire other process for declassifying, and that
25:56
Speaker 1: can be pretty nebulous too. Um Supposedly now nowadays if um,
26:02
Speaker 1: if somebody doesn't doesn't get ahold of this, and very
26:05
Speaker 1: few people are authorized to declassify stuff. Apparently the president
26:08
Speaker 1: can declassify anything at any time, but there's procedures for
26:12
Speaker 1: other like agency heads to declassify stuff. Um, if they
26:15
Speaker 1: don't get ahold of a document and decided to declassify
26:18
Speaker 1: it after ten years, if it's not that big of
26:21
Speaker 1: a deal, it can automatically be declassified if it's very sensitive.
26:26
Speaker 1: And again none of this is defined. Um, they're not saying, like,
26:29
Speaker 1: you know, really sensitive like the Myli massacre documents, Um,
26:34
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff you want to hang onto for
26:36
Speaker 1: twenty five years. So um, there's like a system and
26:40
Speaker 1: involved or in place, but it's not a very good system.
26:44
Speaker 1: And even still you're saying, like, what is the stuff
26:47
Speaker 1: that can just be automatically declassified after ten years? Should
26:50
Speaker 1: it even be classified in the first place, which is
26:52
Speaker 1: something we'll talk about two. Yeah, And the whole thing
26:55
Speaker 1: with the twenty years is like what they're basically saying
26:59
Speaker 1: is we want to wait long enough to where a
27:02
Speaker 1: lot of the people may be dead, a lot of
27:06
Speaker 1: maybe the Statute of Limitations could be up for any crime. Uh,
27:10
Speaker 1: or maybe people hopefully have just gotten over to enough
27:13
Speaker 1: to where they're not super mad about something. It's really interesting. Um,
27:17
Speaker 1: all this comes out of uh shockingly, the last executive
27:23
Speaker 1: order on this kind of thing was from President Obama,
27:27
Speaker 1: which was in two thousand nine. Executive Order thirteen thousand
27:32
Speaker 1: five six replaced all previous orders as far as classification goes,
27:38
Speaker 1: and UH shocked that it wasn't thrown out and uh
27:42
Speaker 1: and redone. It was a little shocking, isn't it. Yeah,
27:46
Speaker 1: I was just I guess no one told the last
27:48
Speaker 1: president that Obama had the last word on that, because UM, yeah,
27:52
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that got through. But um, that
27:55
Speaker 1: is when it it class It moved things into top secret,
27:58
Speaker 1: secret and confidential. And then that's when it talked about
28:02
Speaker 1: you know, whether it was grave damage, serious damage, or
28:04
Speaker 1: damage and uh stuff like that. So that's that's sort
28:09
Speaker 1: of the last word on it. Um. We also should
28:11
Speaker 1: mention there is a level above top secret called sensitive
28:15
Speaker 1: compartmented information, and this is with when you're within if
28:19
Speaker 1: you have top secret clearance, they're like, yeah, but you
28:22
Speaker 1: can't even know this. Only people, these very few people
28:26
Speaker 1: that deal with this thing specifically can even know this,
28:28
Speaker 1: Like that is an sci designation. Sure, and that makes
28:32
Speaker 1: total sense, And it's a very general Leslie Groves idea
28:35
Speaker 1: compartmentalization of of of information, so that if you have
28:39
Speaker 1: top secret clearance and you're in the Department of Energy,
28:43
Speaker 1: they're like, uh, no, you can't have access to this
28:45
Speaker 1: top secret weapons information has nothing to do with your job.
28:48
Speaker 1: You can have all access to the top secret information
28:51
Speaker 1: about the Department of energies new like cold nuclear fusion
28:56
Speaker 1: reactor that we're secretly building, but no, we're you can't
29:00
Speaker 1: see this this new gun design, which makes a lot
29:03
Speaker 1: of sense, but it really just kind of goes to
29:05
Speaker 1: show you how compartmentalized this classified information is, even in
29:08
Speaker 1: the echelons of top secret clearance. Yeah, and within that
29:12
Speaker 1: Obama order, there are eight types of information that can
29:15
Speaker 1: be classified. I don't know if we need to go
29:18
Speaker 1: through all these doing no, not necessarily, but they generally
29:21
Speaker 1: all make sense to me though, like there's not anywhere
29:24
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this one doesn't doesn't make military stuff,
29:26
Speaker 1: weapons stuff, foreign government stuff, un vulnerability of infrastructures, just
29:32
Speaker 1: things you would not want an enemy to to understand,
29:35
Speaker 1: which it makes sense. And yet this executive order, it
29:39
Speaker 1: may have cleaned up the process some, but it hasn't
29:42
Speaker 1: helped It seems like, should we take another break? All right,
29:47
Speaker 1: I'm an agreement on that, by the way, I don't
29:49
Speaker 1: want to keep people in the suspense. And then we're
29:52
Speaker 1: going to come back and talk about what some of
29:54
Speaker 1: the problems are with over classification. And there's a lot
29:57
Speaker 1: of them, all right. So over classification is a thing.
30:21
Speaker 1: We talked about how many documents are classified each year,
30:26
Speaker 1: how many peta bites and billions and billions of pages
30:30
Speaker 1: of information and video and photos are classified. And there
30:35
Speaker 1: is a worry that's obviously been around for a long
30:39
Speaker 1: time that people are and there's a lot of reasons
30:43
Speaker 1: and costs for over classification, but one of the big
30:45
Speaker 1: reasons is that I think a lot of people don't
30:48
Speaker 1: want to be on the hook for it, so they'll
30:51
Speaker 1: just default to classifying something. Uh. And one of the
30:54
Speaker 1: things the Obama order did was you had to have
30:58
Speaker 1: your name on it if you classified it, so at
31:00
Speaker 1: least they knew who it was and they could go
31:03
Speaker 1: back to when it came to challenging that classification, right,
31:06
Speaker 1: which makes sense. That's good, they added some kind of
31:10
Speaker 1: accountability to it, right, But what are some of these costs. Well,
31:14
Speaker 1: one of the big ones is corruption, Like if you
31:16
Speaker 1: keep secrets and you classify everything, like it's really fun
31:20
Speaker 1: to go look for examples of absurd over classification. Um,
31:25
Speaker 1: there's apparently some facetious plot to overthrow Santa clause and
31:29
Speaker 1: some report on it was classified. They routinely classify menus
31:34
Speaker 1: at state dinner banquets, just stuff that does not need
31:38
Speaker 1: to be classified. It reveals just how if everything is classified,
31:42
Speaker 1: it makes it really easy to classify, which means that
31:45
Speaker 1: you can cover up just about anything by classifying it.
31:48
Speaker 1: And so it's a real breeding ground for corruption. Of course,
31:53
Speaker 1: it's a real breeding ground for authoritarianism as well, because
31:57
Speaker 1: if you're allowed to do what you want and then
31:59
Speaker 1: cover it all up and make secrets, uh, and keep
32:02
Speaker 1: those secrets then hide what you're doing essentially, then that
32:06
Speaker 1: that's just a breeding ground, that's a peatrie dish for authoritarianism. Well,
32:09
Speaker 1: I saw another really interesting UM explanation about how it
32:13
Speaker 1: can breed authoritarianism from the outside to from a guy
32:17
Speaker 1: named um Sean Holman. He was a professor at Mount
32:21
Speaker 1: Royal University in Calgary, and he basically said, when you
32:25
Speaker 1: have a government that has overtly has a mountain of
32:28
Speaker 1: secrets that the public knows about, it creates uncertainty, and
32:33
Speaker 1: so people look for certainty, even if it's not truthful.
32:36
Speaker 1: They'll they'll they'll they want it, they seek it out.
32:39
Speaker 1: So anybody can come along and make up whatever they
32:42
Speaker 1: want about what the government's really doing or filling in
32:45
Speaker 1: the blanks and in the in the public's knowledge, and
32:48
Speaker 1: people will hunger for that and listen to what that
32:50
Speaker 1: person is saying, and that can breed authoritarianism as well. Yeah,
32:55
Speaker 1: and you know another thing we failed to mention and
32:57
Speaker 1: is a problem with overclassification is they so far with
33:01
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project that Russia was tipped off because all
33:05
Speaker 1: of a sudden there was no science, no scientific papers
33:08
Speaker 1: coming out. And Russia was like that can also be
33:11
Speaker 1: a bad thing because they were like, all of a sudden, uh,
33:13
Speaker 1: or the Soviet Union, I guess, was like, m this
33:16
Speaker 1: is very interesting. They're they're actually that's been very quiet
33:19
Speaker 1: over there lately. So my spiy sense is going off,
33:21
Speaker 1: they haven't used the word Adam in quite some time.
33:25
Speaker 1: Another thing is that Hinder's research. Of course, Um, we
33:28
Speaker 1: talked about the science. Science should be shared, and I
33:32
Speaker 1: know that people on I know firsthand the people on
33:35
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project were frustrated by Groves and the fact
33:39
Speaker 1: that they couldn't even share stuff with other science departments. Yeah,
33:43
Speaker 1: like he just banned them from speaking. When they're finally
33:46
Speaker 1: relented and let Oppenheimer hold like um, like weekly symposiums
33:51
Speaker 1: trying to hammer out problems that were just intractable. Um.
33:54
Speaker 1: But even still they were closely watched and it was
33:58
Speaker 1: it was a difficult research client meant from what I
34:00
Speaker 1: can tell, Uh sure. And it's also it's also a
34:04
Speaker 1: challenge when you're a when you're an agency like the
34:08
Speaker 1: c i A, and you're not sharing information and things
34:11
Speaker 1: like nine eleven happened possibly because agencies aren't sharing information,
34:17
Speaker 1: or that they're not sharing that there were no weapons
34:19
Speaker 1: of mass destruction and we end up in war. So
34:22
Speaker 1: sharing of information between agencies is it is something that
34:27
Speaker 1: needs to happen more. I think yes, that was also
34:30
Speaker 1: a big problem on nine eleven. Um. I remember seeing
34:33
Speaker 1: on a few documentaries that came around around the twentie
34:37
Speaker 1: anniversary of this past September, where there was like real
34:41
Speaker 1: knowledge about a couple of the hijackers being in the
34:45
Speaker 1: United States and that they were a problem and we
34:47
Speaker 1: should be keeping tabs on them, and the information was
34:50
Speaker 1: just not properly passed along. And I think the nine
34:54
Speaker 1: eleven commission um settled on the idea that that had
34:59
Speaker 1: had this over classification not hindered information sharing, there's a
35:04
Speaker 1: possibility that nine eleven would have been thwarted before it
35:07
Speaker 1: could have been carried out. Sure. Uh. Leaks is another
35:12
Speaker 1: big one, because you know when you when you control
35:14
Speaker 1: the information and have all the information kept secret, you
35:17
Speaker 1: can also leak out bits of that information to to
35:20
Speaker 1: wield as a weapon against a political enemy, and that
35:23
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've seen that happen time and time again. Yeah,
35:26
Speaker 1: like Valerie playing right with Dick Cheney when he outed
35:29
Speaker 1: her to punish her husband for criticizing the Iraq war. Yeah.
35:34
Speaker 1: I think some of the Obama executive order is to
35:37
Speaker 1: protect whistleblowers too, I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and also to
35:41
Speaker 1: protect people who who say this this document is being
35:44
Speaker 1: overclassified with they bring it up to their superior. They
35:47
Speaker 1: should not be punished for that, right. And I think
35:50
Speaker 1: it even and I think the Executive Order even encourages
35:53
Speaker 1: people to um, not protests, but to to question the
35:57
Speaker 1: classification of your superiors and to be allowed to bring
36:01
Speaker 1: that up. Yeah, you're supposed to be like, that's way off.
36:05
Speaker 1: You really screwed that one. Uh. There's one other thing,
36:08
Speaker 1: Chuck two about leaks is that UM over classification in
36:13
Speaker 1: a climate where we're prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers like never before.
36:19
Speaker 1: UM that that if we if we are classifying things
36:24
Speaker 1: that somebody would feel morally obligated to put their own
36:29
Speaker 1: self at risk to release to the public, should that
36:34
Speaker 1: stuff be classified? Should we be classifying that? And the
36:37
Speaker 1: answer is probably not. Um, that it's probably being covered up,
36:41
Speaker 1: is what the classification is being used for. And yet
36:44
Speaker 1: under the letter of the law, because this is classified information,
36:48
Speaker 1: that 'spionage Act says that you can be prosecuted and
36:52
Speaker 1: spend years in jail for following your conscience. Yeah, that's
36:56
Speaker 1: another problem with leaks and over classification. Yeah, and you know,
37:01
Speaker 1: to fight over classification is you know, I guess Ed
37:06
Speaker 1: points it out very kind of plainly, like as an
37:08
Speaker 1: as a president, you're kind of in a known situation.
37:13
Speaker 1: If one of your big mandates is to uh make
37:17
Speaker 1: a lot less things classified, like you might win over
37:21
Speaker 1: you know, some some freedom of information enthusiasts, But as
37:25
Speaker 1: a general, as a general rule, you're not going to
37:28
Speaker 1: do yourselves any political favors by going in there and
37:30
Speaker 1: being like, hey, you know what we need to do
37:32
Speaker 1: is declassify a lot of stuff and not classified nearly
37:35
Speaker 1: as many things. You're also gonna upset the intelligence community greatly.
37:38
Speaker 1: I would assume, yeah, well it's a big part of it.
37:41
Speaker 1: So but some people have said, okay, well there's got
37:43
Speaker 1: to be some stuff we can do. Um time limits
37:45
Speaker 1: is a big one. Yeah. There's a guy named Irwin
37:49
Speaker 1: Griswald who I found in Washington post op ed. He
37:53
Speaker 1: wrote he was the guy who prosecuted the Pentagon papers
37:56
Speaker 1: on behalf of the government. So he prosecuted, like to
37:59
Speaker 1: that time, the biggest leak of government secrets ever. And
38:02
Speaker 1: he came around years later and said we're way over classifying.
38:06
Speaker 1: He basically said, like, there may be some basis for
38:09
Speaker 1: short term classification while plans are being made or negotiations
38:13
Speaker 1: are going on, but apart from details of weapons systems.
38:15
Speaker 1: There is very rarely any real risk to current national
38:18
Speaker 1: security from the publication of facts relating to transactions in
38:22
Speaker 1: the past, even the fairly recent past. So to put
38:25
Speaker 1: a time limit, especially a short time limit on classified material,
38:29
Speaker 1: that would help a lot. Yeah. I mean, is he
38:32
Speaker 1: also the guy that said if you know a lot
38:34
Speaker 1: about this system, then it's pretty clear that a lot
38:37
Speaker 1: of these classifications are to cover up embarrassments. Yeah, he's
38:41
Speaker 1: one and the same. So that's that's not good. That's like,
38:45
Speaker 1: oh boy, this doesn't look good, so let's just classify it.
38:48
Speaker 1: And depending on who you talked to, estimates are anywhere
38:51
Speaker 1: from ten percent to nine of classified information can be
38:55
Speaker 1: put in the overclassified bucket. Yeah, and be one of
38:58
Speaker 1: the things that that he saying and that that Statistics
39:01
Speaker 1: says is that a lot of the reason classified material
39:04
Speaker 1: is classified is to loop the public out, either because
39:08
Speaker 1: Congress is being fed a load of bs by some
39:11
Speaker 1: lobbyists that don't want public input about what they're telling
39:14
Speaker 1: Congress or um there's a real concern that a lot
39:18
Speaker 1: of federal agencies can protect or do protect some of
39:22
Speaker 1: the corporations that they um that they regulate from public scrutiny. Um,
39:28
Speaker 1: that could be a really big issue too, right, Oh
39:31
Speaker 1: for sure. Like I think the FCC in the early
39:33
Speaker 1: two thousands said that they weren't going to allow UM
39:36
Speaker 1: reports about outages among wireless car carriers to be made
39:40
Speaker 1: public out of a fear of being a threat to
39:43
Speaker 1: national security. Which yeah, I mean there's a lot of
39:46
Speaker 1: that stuff. The the other one with the protecting the
39:50
Speaker 1: the Department of Agriculture protecting I guess it depends on
39:54
Speaker 1: you talked to if you want to think it's protecting
39:56
Speaker 1: but um food producers from if they produce a food
40:00
Speaker 1: board and illness into the food supply, like, they might
40:03
Speaker 1: not allow that information on like who it was to
40:05
Speaker 1: be released as a protective measure. And that's when it
40:09
Speaker 1: gets a little dicey that in the f CC, it's like,
40:12
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, these this is these are
40:14
Speaker 1: big public companies and you're talking about the public good,
40:18
Speaker 1: but you're throwing like a shield around it, and maybe
40:20
Speaker 1: that's not the best thing to do. And even still,
40:22
Speaker 1: you can take it to an even more extreme degree,
40:25
Speaker 1: right up to the CIA's doorstep and say, um, I've
40:28
Speaker 1: seen people argue that that you by looping the American
40:32
Speaker 1: public out about the secret torture program, the the ghost
40:37
Speaker 1: prisons program. Um. It kept the public from being able
40:42
Speaker 1: to hold the debate on whether this is something we
40:44
Speaker 1: want America to be doing or not. And that's a
40:47
Speaker 1: huge part of it, Chuck. I mean, like the basis
40:49
Speaker 1: of democracies, the public being looped in and then the
40:52
Speaker 1: government carrying out the wishes of the public. If you're
40:56
Speaker 1: looping the public out, then that's just the government operating
40:59
Speaker 1: and deciding on your behalf without any input from you whatsoever,
41:03
Speaker 1: because you're being completely kept in the dark. That is
41:05
Speaker 1: a huge basis of the classification system in America. Sadly.
41:10
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean the the agencies in the military,
41:13
Speaker 1: I think firmly believe that the public is better off
41:16
Speaker 1: if they don't have any knowledge of this stuff and
41:19
Speaker 1: any opinion on what we're doing behind closed doors. Yeah,
41:22
Speaker 1: And I mean they're like, what do you want to know?
41:24
Speaker 1: Where where water boarding people? And I think a lot
41:26
Speaker 1: of people would say, yeah, I would have liked to
41:28
Speaker 1: have known that so I could vote it. Whoever was
41:30
Speaker 1: supporting that right out of office, because I don't support waterboarding,
41:33
Speaker 1: even terrorists. No one was given that opportunity the public,
41:37
Speaker 1: even the people who agreed with it. We're giving the
41:40
Speaker 1: opportunity to debate the merits of it in public because
41:45
Speaker 1: everyone was kept in the dark. Yeah, and you might think, okay,
41:49
Speaker 1: well I actually do agree with water boarding terrorists. Well
41:52
Speaker 1: that that was that was something the CIA kept that
41:55
Speaker 1: you agreed with. What about all the other things that
41:57
Speaker 1: are kept secret that you don't agree with? That as
41:59
Speaker 1: being kept out of your ability to debate? Yeah, the
42:03
Speaker 1: quick movie recommendation on that note, The new Paul Trader movie,
42:08
Speaker 1: The Card Counter Fantastic. Oh yeah, won't give away too much,
42:13
Speaker 1: but Oscar Isaacs plays a sort of a very solitary
42:17
Speaker 1: gambler poker player who is haunted by his pass as
42:21
Speaker 1: a former prison guard at Abu Grabe. Oh wow, okay,
42:25
Speaker 1: I'll check that out. So there. And you know, pauls
42:27
Speaker 1: Traders still making this really really, he's still being Paul Traders,
42:31
Speaker 1: so tough, challenging hardcore movies. What else has he done?
42:36
Speaker 1: He wrote Taxi Driver. Um. He also made a movie
42:40
Speaker 1: called Hardcore Back and I think the eighties about it's
42:44
Speaker 1: always just very grizzly, grizzly stuff. And he also did
42:48
Speaker 1: Meet Me in St. Louis. Like the last movie he
42:52
Speaker 1: did before this one was first Reformed, the Ethan Hawk
42:55
Speaker 1: movie where he played the priest. I don't know if
42:57
Speaker 1: you saw that, but because these are seen any of
43:00
Speaker 1: his movies, I saw a taxi driver. I thought that
43:04
Speaker 1: he used to write more movies and now he directs
43:07
Speaker 1: quite a bit. But he also wrote. I mean he
43:10
Speaker 1: wrote less Sentation of Christ and oh wow, this guy's
43:12
Speaker 1: good raging bowl American Giggilo stuff like that. I love
43:16
Speaker 1: his stuff. Yeah, you know, Pultrator, you just don't know him.
43:19
Speaker 1: I got you anyway, great movie recommendation. But we were
43:24
Speaker 1: talking about secret prisons and it felt relevant. So I mean,
43:29
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of things that that people say, Okay,
43:32
Speaker 1: you know, here's some fixes we can do. But it
43:35
Speaker 1: seems like it all kind of comes down to Chuck
43:37
Speaker 1: putting time limits on classified material and really raising the
43:42
Speaker 1: bar for what qualifies as a classified material or not,
43:45
Speaker 1: and then in conjunction with that, making the act of
43:49
Speaker 1: classifying material um accountable, like saying like like like if
43:55
Speaker 1: you if you over classify, you're in trouble, Like there's
43:58
Speaker 1: something you're doing your job wrong and you're gonna get
44:00
Speaker 1: fired and replaced. Um that those three things seem to
44:03
Speaker 1: kind of be the bottom line, and there seems to
44:05
Speaker 1: be almost no movement whatsoever on it. Yeah, And I
44:08
Speaker 1: think the other two that are could be pretty impactful
44:11
Speaker 1: is make make declassification a real thing, sort of like
44:16
Speaker 1: a practice and less like well someone has to submit
44:18
Speaker 1: a Fourier request or really bug us. And then within
44:22
Speaker 1: that system, I mean, we could do an episode on
44:24
Speaker 1: Foyer request because they don't want you to find out something.
44:27
Speaker 1: They can They can stand bag you for years, they
44:30
Speaker 1: can put you off. They can release a document that
44:33
Speaker 1: is redacted, like of it is redacted and go like here,
44:37
Speaker 1: here's here's a bunch of adjectives. Uh. So, you know,
44:41
Speaker 1: I think making that real would help. But I don't
44:45
Speaker 1: know if anyone's gonna have the the guts to kind
44:48
Speaker 1: of stand up to this stuff because it's not a
44:51
Speaker 1: very electable position. You know, Well, my friend, I'm going
44:54
Speaker 1: to do you one better. We actually have done an
44:56
Speaker 1: episode on for you, did we I'm gonna double check, but, um,
45:01
Speaker 1: but I believe we did. I know we've talked about
45:04
Speaker 1: it extensively. We have, we probably did. Yeah, so you know,
45:08
Speaker 1: we don't even have to do that. We can just
45:09
Speaker 1: go back and listen to yep, how foy it works. Okay, Well,
45:13
Speaker 1: in my defense in in April, everyone, it will be
45:16
Speaker 1: fourteen years that's true. And this is from like four
45:19
Speaker 1: or five years ago. So don't don't, right man. I
45:21
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna say, like last week, right, you
45:24
Speaker 1: got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a
45:27
Speaker 1: good one, yeah, agreed. Um, Well, thanks to the grabster
45:30
Speaker 1: and to all the people who wrote the articles that
45:32
Speaker 1: we use for research here. Um. And if you want
45:35
Speaker 1: to know more about over classification, seriously, if this struck
45:39
Speaker 1: you is at all interesting, there's a whole world out
45:41
Speaker 1: there of debate about what should be classified and what
45:44
Speaker 1: shouldn't and how to fix this, uh, that you might
45:46
Speaker 1: find interesting. And since I said you might find it interesting,
45:50
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this court reporter. Oh.
45:58
Speaker 1: I like this one. This is a good one. This
45:59
Speaker 1: is a little lengthy, but I cut it down some.
46:01
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm sitting at my desk in the courthouse
46:03
Speaker 1: in North l A County and just finished listening to
46:05
Speaker 1: unsung Heroes of the Court, and I am still beaming.
46:09
Speaker 1: I am a court reporter. Stenographer. I went to court
46:11
Speaker 1: reporting straight out of high school after taking a speed
46:15
Speaker 1: running class. Just like Chuck, I learned about court reporting
46:17
Speaker 1: from a Career day speaker. I spoke to our class
46:20
Speaker 1: and knew immediately that this was the job for me.
46:22
Speaker 1: I learned how to type on an old manual typewriter
46:24
Speaker 1: in seventh grade. Took typing every year because it was
46:27
Speaker 1: an easy a By the time I graduated, I could
46:29
Speaker 1: type sixty five words per minute. A couple of years later,
46:33
Speaker 1: I got my California court reporting license the age of nineteen.
46:37
Speaker 1: I turned fifty five next month, so thirty five plus
46:39
Speaker 1: years later, I'm still loving my career. UH. We court
46:43
Speaker 1: reporters are truly unsung heroes in the courtroom. I often
46:45
Speaker 1: compare my job to a wedding photographer. Once everything is
46:49
Speaker 1: said and done, the transcript we create is all that remains, uh,
46:53
Speaker 1: and we're fairly invisible, so make sure you have a
46:55
Speaker 1: good one. Our Stuno machines are incredibly high tech, equipped
46:58
Speaker 1: with bluetooth communication for real time simultaneous transcription to laptops,
47:03
Speaker 1: iPads and the Internet. We can access the transcript immediately
47:07
Speaker 1: for readback and clarification for the record, which is extremely
47:10
Speaker 1: useful to assist the lawyer's parties, the judge and juries.
47:14
Speaker 1: That said, we are in desperate need of more court reporters. Guys.
47:18
Speaker 1: Tech schools lost their luster in an era where everyone
47:21
Speaker 1: felt the need to have a college degree. But just
47:23
Speaker 1: like bailiffs that we cherish in our own courthouses, court
47:27
Speaker 1: reporting school doesn't require a college degree. It just requires
47:31
Speaker 1: hard work and a dedication to your profession and nerves
47:34
Speaker 1: of steel. That's right. I have never regretted my career choice.
47:38
Speaker 1: And I thank you Josh, Chuck and Livia Olivia's first
47:42
Speaker 1: shoutout for highlighting uh we court reporters in the crucial
47:46
Speaker 1: role we play in the courtroom. That is from Linda Davidson,
47:50
Speaker 1: l a superior court official, court reporter and proud of it.
47:54
Speaker 1: Very nice. Thank you, Linda. That was a great email.
47:56
Speaker 1: I appreciate that one big time. That was a great
47:59
Speaker 1: idea for an episode to Chuck. It turned out to
48:02
Speaker 1: be pretty pretty good, and we heard from I haven't
48:05
Speaker 1: heard from a bailiff yet, but we've heard from actually
48:08
Speaker 1: just a couple of court reporters. No sketch rads, right,
48:11
Speaker 1: they're quiet, Yeah, they're quiet. Oh, but get this, I
48:13
Speaker 1: was watching Oh what case? I think the Gillaine Maxwell case,
48:18
Speaker 1: and clearly the sketch artist who had drawn that Tom
48:23
Speaker 1: Brady one that went viral she was producing sketches for.
48:27
Speaker 1: I think NBC's UM National News recognized her style. I
48:33
Speaker 1: was just looking at the one for the Elizabeth Holmes
48:35
Speaker 1: case this morning, and now when I see those, I'm like, Okay,
48:39
Speaker 1: nice work, it looks good. Yeah right right, well, thanks again, Linda.
48:43
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Linda and get in
48:44
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can send us an email to
48:47
Speaker 1: stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
48:53
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
48:56
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
49:00
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H