Thread by @doctorow

The fact that every prez and VP has a garage or shoebox full of #ClassifiedDocuments isn't (merely) evidence of political impunity - it's also the latest absurd turn in the long-running true scandal: the American epidemic of #overclassification and excessive #secrecy. 1/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2023/01/30/i-c… 2/

Thousands of American bureaucrats have unilaterally classified tens of millions of unremarkable documents without any legitimate basis for shielding them from public view. 3/

Meanwhile, millions of people have "#TopSecret #Clearance" and can view these documents, making a mockery of their supposed secrecy. 4/

Writing for @TheProspect, @ddayen crystallizes the incentives, problems and corruption we *should* be paying to, and laments that instead, we're scoring cheap political points about the recklessness of presidents and ex-presidents:

prospect.org/politics/2023-… 5/

These are heavily salted with paranoid fantasies about the Danger to National Security (TM) posed by letting these docs escape the airless chambers of official secrecy. 6/

Overclassification is a well-documented (ahem) problem, used by bureaucrats to cover up corruption, crimes and incompetence, as well as out of the lazy reflex to declare *everything* to be secret. 7/

This is abetted by members of the vast "#IntelligenceCommunity" who have rotated into the private sector and have a lucrative side-hustle as TV talking heads who spin spy-thriller fantasies about the risks of these paper broken arrows. 8/

Dayen points to Senator Moynihan's 1997 report on "Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy," and its conclusion: by declaring everything secret, *nothing* ends up being truly secret. It's a devastating critique of official secrecy. No one listened.

sgp.fas.org/library/moynih… 9/

In 2016, the House Oversight Committee concluded that 90% of classified documents should not be classified, the same figure that the #DoD came up with in its own report, *60 years* earlier:

oversight.house.gov/hearing/examin… 10/

Meanwhile, the #InformationSecurityOversightOffice - which oversees classification - keeps ringing alarm bells about overclassification, with 50m+ documents being classified in a typical year. 11/

Rather than listen to the ISOO, Congress has cut its staff in half over the past decade. 620 ISOO employees oversee the *three million* Americans empowered to classify documents:

fas.org/irp/congress/2… 12/

In 2010, the @washingtonpost's @danapriest and @warkin took stock of the post-9/11 explosion in state secrets in their "Top Secret America" report:

washingtonpost.com/investigations… 13/

"No one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." 14/

Attempts to liberate classified docs using #FOIA fail when agencies return heavily redacted documents, blacking out the plans of the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge [to hijack the Xmas Eve flight of] Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus."

nytimes.com/2017/08/22/mag… 15/

As Dayen says, the talking point from ex-spooks on TV that "overclassification is no excuse for bad document handling," is the equivalent of the old saw that "mass shootings are not the time to talk about gun control." And yet, the press keeps buying it. 16/

Take the @politico op-ed by an ex-#FBI spook, who turned the fact that "a foreign leader might like turnip-flavored ice cream into a classifiable scenario," proving that there is no overclassification excuse too absurd to get an airing:

politico.com/news/magazine/… 17/