Having begun this journey by which I seek to understand just what the hell is going on in the world of American politics, I find myself chuckling once again.
My previous post was about the 8th August 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, the post-presidential Home of the Craven in the Land of the Free Marketeer, Donald J. Trump. In that post, I stated that I would expand upon the specific legal meaning of the following terms: top secret, secret, and confidential.
What caused me to laugh?
Here we go. We know that Trump was fond of executive orders, at least in the early stages of his presidency, because he’s an executive kind of guy. However, he isn’t at the top of the list when it comes to issuing executive orders. Out of all the presidents, Trump comes in at No. 17. The president immediately above him is none other than his nemesis: Barack Obama.
In fairness to Trump, his work rate was high when it came to issuing executive orders (and probably nothing else). Although Obama did issue 56 more EOs than Trump, he had two terms in which to do it. And there’s no way anyone could come close to Franklin D. Roosevelt in terms of the number of executive orders issued: he takes the top spot, with a whopping 3,728 EOs issued. (Second place goes to Woodrow Wilson, who served two terms and banged out just 1803 EOs, less than half of what FDR managed later.) However, FDR was president for three terms and had just begun his fourth. That’s 12-and-a-bit years. Astonishing, isn’t it?
We can be thankful that Trump was only in for one term and didn’t get the chance to overturn the 2021 election. Imagine another eight years of him! (Actually, we’re getting some idea of what that might have been like, thanks to SCOTUS, as well as Mitch McConnell and his motley band of GOP goons.)
That’s not much of a laugh, though, is it?
No, you’re right. That’s not what made me laugh, although Trump trailing Obama is certainly funny.
What made me laugh is that the handling of classified records is set out in an executive order – Executive Order 13526, to be precise – with which Trump had no involvement. It was made by none other than – yes, you’ve guessed it – President Barack Obama.
Get to the point, will you?
But of course. I promised you classification, and by god, that’s what you’re going to get.
Here is Section 1.2 of Executive Order 13526 of 29th December 2009:
Classification Levels.
(a) Information may be classified at one of the following three levels:
(1) ‘‘Top Secret’’ shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.
(2) ‘‘Secret’’ shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.
(3) ‘‘Confidential’’ shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.
So there you go. In all three classifications, the central issue is damage to national security in the event that information is disclosed. It is only the degree of damage that varies:
Confidential = damage;
Secret = serious damage;
Top Secret = exceptionally grave damage.
More to follow. Thank you for reading.