Congress Has a Lo-Fi Plan to Fix the Classified Documents Mess
Pictures and photocopies aren’t just forbidden; lawmakers wouldn’t dare consider either. WIRED interviewed more than 15 members of Congress’ two Intelligence Committees, and each maintains they’ve never taken a classified document home. In fact, they’re pretty sure they couldn’t if they tried.
That’s why last week’s revelation that Pence also had classified documents stunned the secret keepers of the Senate: The first set of misplaced secrets was scandalous; the second revealed we have a partisan problem; the third convinced lawmakers that there’s a pattern—and the nation has a problem on its hands.
“It’s extraordinary, given how careful we have to be,” says Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.
To grasp why the mishandling of classified materials troubles Congress so completely, it’s important to understand the culture of Capitol Hill. Besides questions of war and peace or the weightiness of an impeachment trial—where senators are also forced to surrender their electronics before sitting as the jury—there’s nothing that ties politicians in knots more than classified information. They speak publicly for a living, so the anxiety over accidentally saying something that’s officially a state secret is understandable.
The fear and trepidation over accidentally letting a secret slip is also hammered into lawmakers’ intelligence staffers, who handle the classified material as further protection against absent-minded members of Congress. To get a security clearance, these staffers undergo purposefully intimidating, invasive, and multi-stepped background checks conducted by either the Pentagon or FBI, and sometimes both. Even after being cleared, new hires are forbidden to start until they sign a nondisclosure agreement—effectively sealing their lips for life.
“Only certain staffers are allowed to possess classified information in the Capitol. Usually, they keep it in our Intelligence Committee, and they walk around with a locked bag that has them in them,” says Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So you can’t make a photocopy and send it to you as an attachment in email.”
When it comes to viewing America’s secrets, even leaders at the Capitol don’t get special access. “They would bring them in. I would read them. They take them out. So they couldn’t even stay on my desk,” says Durbin. “I can’t understand why the executive branch has such a lax approach to this that we have three major elected officials with these documents in their possession and not explaining why.”
Other committees can request to see classified materials in the Intelligence Committee’s possession. If the request is approved by the select panel, the materials are ferried—under lock and key—to other lawmakers with a stern warning: “Such material shall be accompanied by a verbal or written notice to the recipients advising of their responsibility to protect such materials.” Each night, sensitive materials must be returned to a secure SCIF. A written record of the secret’s travels is required.
That’s why the confusion at the Capitol is so bipartisan these days: How does one misplace such a sensitive document? Let alone batches of them?
“I don’t know how you actually do that. That’s the question, but we're talking about the president and vice president, and that’s a little different,” says Republican senator Lyndsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Gloss