A series by the Washington Post about Dick Cheney's tenure as Vice President. I did some preliminary scanning through it and some of it really sticks out in a bad way to me. So far, this was one of the things that really got my blood boiling:
Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."
To even suggest that his talking points should be treated as TS/SCI material is absurd and insulting to every intelligence officer wounded or killed in pursuit of goals that were covered under TS/SCI-classified operations. On top of that, it is about as bad as the security breaches themselves because it undermines the importance of the definition of top secret material. Once again, the they show no shame in carving out hypocritical exceptions for themselves.
I have a diferent perspective on that.
My own office at the DoD has gone over to marking everything FOUO (for Official Use Only). It is a fact of life in DC that political partisans (liberals) will release sensitive, but not classified, information into the press for purely partisan reasons. We have whole independent networks for secret and TS information and any unclassified information, like a lunch invitation, is automatically secret or TS as a result of being sent on that network.
It is also obvious that the liberals in DoD and CIA have been releasing classified information illegally into the media and they don't really care about what the consequences for national security are.
Finally, look at the whole scooter libby/ valerie plame hooha. The intent of the special prosecutor was to implicate the VP or Carl Rove. Millions wasted to persecute an innocent man. If I were int eh white house I would have a lock-down on all communications too.
Hmmm, Roci makes a good point.
BTW, I too have a "man-sized" Mosler safe in my personal office. I'm not telling what's in it.
Does anyone believe that Al Gore did not have a safe or that his staff were not expected to keep his correspondences confidential?