Speaker 1: Today. We welcome to the program. Matthew Connolly, who's a Columbia history
professor and also author of the book The Declassification Engine What History Reveals
About America's Top Secrets. A really great having you on today. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, David. Speaker 1: So, you know, we've been talking
about these recent classified documents. I guess it's fine to call them scandals or news stories
involving Donald Trump and several hundred documents. And then Joe Biden and Mike Pence
reportedly with a small number of documents that they didn't appear to be deliberately keeping at
their homes or offices, which is certainly a difference to what we know so far about the
Trump story. But there's sort of like a zooming out that we can do more generally to think about
what sort of documents are classified. Are we classifying the right number of documents? Are
there things that are over classified and actually reducing transparency? So maybe to start with,
what is the history of this concept of these sorts of classifications that that have been created?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you might think that this is something that governments do. You know,
you could think of it like death and taxes, right? That government officials would like to operate
under the cloak of secrecy. But the fact is, the United States, compared to other countries anyway,
was really an outlier. You know, for the first 150 years, the U.S. was quite remarkable. You know, I
think a lot of people probably know we'd never had a Central Intelligence Agency. We we also, unlike
other countries, we didn't have what they used to call black chambers, where they would intercept
and decode communications. I mean, almost every other country the size of the U.S. had the means
and actually the motivation to track subversives. They would intercept their mail and so on. In the
United States, that was a felony. So, you know, both on the one hand, it was a matter of the U.S.
government not really creating a lot of secrets. And then on the other hand, people had a very high
expectation as to their own personal privacy. So what we now take for granted, you know,
what some people call the national secrecy complex, You know what I call the dark state. It's
really an invention of the last 80 years or so. It really only started after the Second World War.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about what types of things are classified, secret, top secret,
etc., all these different designations, I think the assumption is always that these are extremely
sensitive pieces of information, often related to probably more foreign policy than domestic
policy. I think that's the assumption. But there's relatively mundane things that are
also designated in these ways. Speaker 2: Oh, sure. You know,
so it's interesting. There's a kind of, you know, dual dialog going on about secrecy where,
you know, when you bring out people who have their security clearances and spent years
in the intelligence community or what have you. Yeah. They'll tell you about all these
rules and how elaborate they are and how careful people have to be. But the reality is, you know,
if you actually study this history and you look at what people do every day, they'll tell you, yeah,
you know, I had to meet a colleague for coffee and I classified that email as top secret because,
you know, at some point in that long email chain, by the time we finally figure out, you know,
which Starbucks you're going to I may have said something about some program, you know, that could
be classified. So better safe than sorry. You know, and this is how you end up with what is now
a completely unmanageable situation. You know, the State Department generates some 2 billion email a
year. So just think of the volume of these coffee, you know, emails that end up being top secret,
where for decades nobody's ever going to see them unless somebody reviews that stuff page by page to
decide the rest of us are allowed to read it. Speaker 1: So it seems that the sort of most
obvious concern one would have about overclassification would be it reduces
transparency. There are documents here that, you know, maybe we don't post everything,
but at least through FOIA requests should be available if someone wanted them. And
you reduce transparency if you over classify. Is it that simple or what
other concerns are there with overclassification? Speaker 2: Well, you know, for me as a historian,
I care a lot, you know, about. But a lot of other people, too, would say is the court of history,
you know, because, you know, if and it's true, we have 18 different intelligence agencies. We
have an $800 billion Defense Department. We have this vast apparatus that's carrying out covert
operations, you know, targeted assassinations. You know, wouldn't you like to think that at some
point, you know, someone is going to be able to look at all the evidence? Right. To even if it's
only the court of history to hold our leaders to account? You know, but I could tell you that's
just not going to happen, you know, because even before the era of electronic records, you know,
this age of big data, the National Archives could only keep about 1 to 3% of the original
documentary record. And if it's the case and it's true, we now have just to take another example,
we have one intelligence agency that's producing a petabyte of classified data every single year.
If those were paper records and they were lined up in file cabinets and file folders, it would
circle the equator. And even the government says it would take 2 million archivists just
to go through that to decide what the rest of us are allowed to know. So yeah, that's important. I
think it matters because if you think, you know, history matters and ultimately, you know, holding
our leaders to account, that matters quite a lot. But I'll tell you the other reason it matters,
and this is also not trivial when they can't decide what's actually secret, they can't protect
the stuff that really could kill people. And we've just seen one after another, you know, and these
really are scandals like NSA, CIA hacking tools, you know, getting stolen. We've seen, you know,
the Chinese government apparently taking tens of millions of personnel records with which
they could use to blackmail people who do have top secret security clearances. Right. So that, too,
is a real danger and it's a danger here and now. Speaker 1: I mentioned the Trump Biden Pence
controversies. We could include in that Hillary Clinton in a sense. I mean, it was looked at by
the FBI. It related more to an email server. How do you assess these types of controversies in
terms of how they compare to one another? And kind of the big picture significance as to how common
more generally it is? I mean, I said the other day, I wouldn't be shocked if secretaries of state
had a few documents lying around. And it's just not a high priority to look. I just don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And, you know, to me, I actually do look at, you know, whether it's about,
you know, Hillary Clinton in her email or, you know, Biden, Pence, Trump, etc., etc., etc.,
you learn even more names soon enough. I also go back to the way in which during the George
W Bush administration, they used to write their email using Republican National Committee email
servers. Right. What all these things have in common is that these are public officials doing
the people's business and they treat the record of their actions, their decisions as if it were their
private property, where they have no obligation to share that information with the National Archives.
Why does that matter? Because, you know, it's our history. You know, wouldn't we like to think,
you know, that as citizens, you know, we could file Freedom of Information Act requests, right?
Maybe we'd like to know what the George H.W. Bush administration is doing. Maybe we'd like to know
what Secretary Clinton was doing, you know, But if they'd gotten away with it, and to be honest,
to a large extent they did. Yeah. You know, a lot of those records would never be recoverable and
none of us would ever have the ability to to see them. And so, you know, that's why I say,
like as an historian, I take the longer view, you know, and I'm sorry to say, but, you know,
even if some of these cases, you know, the most egregious of all, of course, is Donald Trump,
even if some of these cases are worse than others, I think we've all of us got to wake up and see,
you know, that whether it's Democrats or Republicans do it, we have to recognize that
this is something all of us should care about. Speaker 1: When it comes to the Trump thing.
Like as an example, it's hard to imagine that the things he would want to have down at his house
are email chains about which Starbucks people are meeting at, but without something more tangible.
Maybe it's not totally clear. Like what? What kinds of things could they be? What is the
what are the sorts of categories of things that he might have down there that one would want to have?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, we know apparently, you know, that some of these
documents related to President Macron of France, you know, I don't know. But I think it's typically
the case that, you know, presidents before they have international meetings,
they'll get briefing books. We know, like from what Edward Snowden revealed, that the NSA,
you know, did try to target, you know, foreign heads of state, some of them allies. Right.
That they intercepted their communications. It's entirely possible, you know, that in those records
we have, you know, examples of how it is the NSA intercepted communications. Maybe some of them are
incriminating. And that's why we're going to talk about them endlessly, because there's something
intrinsically fascinating about something that's secret. And psychologists have studied this. So
you could take random pieces of paper. You stamped them top secret. And in controlled experiments,
people always think that those are the pieces of paper that are more important. Those are the
things that I have to pay attention to. You know, so, yes, it could be a big deal. And,
you know, the fact that those documents were unsecured and could have been stolen,
I mean, we know that there were foreign operatives who were active, you know, trying to penetrate
Mar-A-Lago. There was one guy, you know, I think he was a Chinese national who went in with many,
you know, USB sticks. Right. You know, usually take like eight or ten USB sticks to the poor.
So, yes, we should be concerned about that. But again, I think it's part of a much bigger story.
Speaker 1: The protocol around a lot of these documents, at least as
far as members of the House and Senate have said, is depending on their classification,
there would be particular rooms where the documents are kept, where when you go in,
you have to leave your phone outside. You know, the idea is prevent anybody from even
photographing the documents. You're not allowed to take notes. You basically look at it. And I
guess the idea is you're sort of committing to memory, whatever about it is relevant or
interesting or you want to look into. Is that a process that makes sense at this point in time,
given the sort of digital age that we're in? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, those are the
rules that the executive branch imposes on the legislative branch and Congress has to abide
by them or they don't get to see anything. Hmm. Right. But on the other hand, you know, it's a
well-known fact that when, for example, you know, say, staffers, the National Security Council,
let's say they go into a meeting, you know, to decide what's the U.S. going to do if China tries
to take Taiwan. You know, they may be handling lots of classified records. Right. And they know
that they have to be careful of those records. But when they take notes, do you think that they
always classify them, even if they're talking about the same information? It's a well-known
fact that oftentimes those notes go home with them. And sometimes when they leave, you know,
the National Security Council, those notes end up in their homes. Right. And staying there,
one reason for that, you know, of course, people want to do work. Sometimes people work long hours.
They want to be able to work at home. But another reason is a lot of people want to go on to write
their memoirs. Right. And and look like when you see all of the books that come out. Right,
both during but especially after administrations and when you know who those people are and how
it is that they go around a publishers and they get their big advances, is it always because they
are so gifted at telling a good story? No, it's typically because they say or at least imply that
there are going to reveal these secrets. Right. These things that they knew during their time in
the Trump White House. So in that way, they are monetizing, you know, information that's
supposed to belong to all of us. So to me, again, that is really to me even more so than, say,
national security. That's the bigger story here. Speaker 1: On the issue of the books, you know,
you will often read articles that say, well, a former secretary of state wrote a book and
the Pentagon looked at the book to evaluate whether there was anything being revealed
that ba ba ba ba ba. You sort of know the drill. What about that process in terms of is is someone
at the Pentagon really so involved that they would say this name you mentioned on page 120,
You need to change that and say it's a source you can't name or like at what level are they
presiding over the books that are published? Speaker 2: They will deny it, but there are
different rules for different people. Mm hmm. Right. So if you're Mike Pompeo. Right. And
you have amazing things to say about the CIA, right. And how awesome it is
and how they protect our people all the time in ways they can't quite reveal,
then you're going to get one kind of reading and you're going to get different kinds of redactions
or maybe none at all. Right. If you're another kind of person. Right. Like even John Bolton,
say and let's say like when you conclude your time in the Trump White House and you want to tell all
and you want to say really critical things about the president, the former president,
now, you know, then you're going to get a very different reading. They're going to give you a
much harder time. It's even harder, you know, for people who do not have the kind of name
recognition, can't hire the kind of lawyers that somebody like Bolton can and instead,
like have to wait sometimes months, sometimes years. Right. To get that reading. And God forbid,
this is somebody who really wants to tell you what's really happening, you know,
whether it's at the NSA or the CIA, those people go through a real ordeal. Right. And if they
make mistakes, they get prosecuted. Yeah. Speaker 1: That seems to be an area where
the overclassification I mean, people writing their memoirs is not of the utmost importance
when we think about the grand scheme of things. But it seems that that's directly
affected by this overclassification that you're talking about, where many,
many government hours end up going into reviewing the books and. Redacting them because of the
very overclassification that is in place. Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, they do.
And they've been doing it for four decades now. I mean, there are some civil liberties lawyers who
are trying to challenge this process because what they would point out is, like, for example, after
the end of the Trump administration, wouldn't we like to know everything we possibly can about what
happened, you know, in those years? It's like, wouldn't we like to know as much as we can about
January six? Well, if it's the case that currently serving government officials are the ones to
decide what we're allowed to know, then basically that information is being censored. And so we're
only going to know what the government allows us to know all in the name of national security.
Speaker 1: Hey, last thing. I know that your expertise is in history, not grammar,
but I heard you say during this interview. And historian And then you also said a
historian. This is actually my audience writes in about this is either correct in your mind.
Speaker 2: I really say his story. Speaker 1: I thought,
well, maybe I misheard it. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's possible.
I usually say it is. Speaker 1:
Me too. Speaker 2: Yeah.
I don't know if there's a rule. Yeah, it's not really clear to me. It's just
my quirk. Well, we'll. Speaker 1: Look into it.
We'll look into it. All right. Speaker 2: We've got to get.
Speaker 1: Matthew Carney in Columbia history professor. We're linking to his book The
Declassification Engine What History Reveals about America's Top Secrets. Really appreciate
your time and insights today. Speaker 2: Thank you, David.