Stuff You Should Know - How Classified Information Works

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

The government loves to mark just about any information as secret, which wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t so contrary to running a healthy democracy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there on the down low. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.

The top secret edition. Yes, exactly what you should know is decided by us. That's right. We give clearance, clearance. That's a good one. I wouldn't have put that one together, but that's great. Thanks. So Chuck, we're talking about classified information, top secret information a lot of people call it by, especially if you're 12 years old or younger. But it's actually a real thing. It's like a real designation, top secret. Yeah. Which by the way, I went back and watched that movie again for the first time in years and it is hilarious. Yeah, I just made an airplane reference and top secret is the same guy. This is Zuckers, right? Zuckers, yep. I think they worked with somebody different that time. I'm not sure in what capacity, but the Zuckers were

involved for sure. That documentary on him is fantastic, by the way. I've heard. I have not yet to watch it. We just got through made. Have you seen made? Haven't seen made. Wow, we. It's a even after it and just like, I wonder what bad thing is going to happen to her next. I know something bad is going to her. It really wears you down like that for sure, but it's good. It's worth watching. Well, since we're on it with TV Rex before we get going, I've been watching Station 11 and it's one of my favorite shows in years. Station 11, what's it on? HBO. It is a, from a novel, a post-apocalyptic virus, actually, pandemic. Very topical. Weirdly, but it's more on the order of like 99% of the earth died. But it's not the road. It's more interesting. It's more hopeful

and artistic. Cool. Check it out. Did you ever see the leftovers, I think, is what they were called? Well, what's funny is we're watching that too. We just started that because we were in that groove. Yeah. And we never saw the leftovers. And I heard it was really good, kind of, and even got better through the years. Yeah. I envy you. I wish I could see the leftovers again for the first time. It's that good. Boy, I'm really excited, Ned. It's very good. All right. Now we should get to it because this is dense. So we're talking about, yes, it is super dense. I mean, this, we asked some help from Ed Grabinowski, the Grabster, and he turned into James Missioner novel. It is so dense. Every paragraph is really dense.

And it's inevitable. Like just researching this one, there's so much to just go and read and so many rabbit holes to go down. Because what we're talking about is really like simple concept on its face. Like there are secrets that like any government would not want other governments or other people or sometimes even their own people to know. It would just make the functioning of that government that much harder. It might make the country vulnerable to attack. There's a lot of reasons why you would not want to share all of your business. So you want to classify information based on how damaging it could be to national security. And then you just decide who has clearance to see that those various classifications of

information. That's it. That's classified information. But in practice, in reality, it's such a behemoth concept that is so fraught with problems that is so often completely and utterly anti-democratic. And then it's just so bureaucratically layered that it is extremely, it's an extremely dense topic. I just wanted to make sure we added a good extra three minutes onto this episode with that. Well, I think the good news is the history can be condensed really easily into they had state secrets back in ancient times too. But back then it was a lot easier to keep secrets because there was no technology and there was no bureaucracy generally. So if the autocratic or semi-autocratic leader said it was a secret, then it was a secret and that

was kind of the end of it. Things changed because of technology and because of bureaucracy and because of the development of nuclear weapons when there was truly something so kind of world ending at stake that things needed to be ratcheted up. And this all started with a series of acts and even more so a series of presidential executive orders over the years to really sort of put these executive orders in place to vaguely say who can know what and how we're going to do it. And then the acts come into play to say how are we going to punish people who do it the wrong way or don't do it. Yeah. And it's like you said, the executive orders are where the kind of classification and how things are classified, how they become declassified, how that got all sorted out. But Congress has

largely been left to figure out how to punish people who transgress against those sharing that information. And that whole thing started with the Defense Secrets Act of 1911 appropriately, which evolved into the Espionage Act. But you use the word that I think is really important and really describes one of the big problems with the classification system in the United States, which is it's vague. The descriptions, the explanations, the rules are very vague and nebulous. And so there's a lot of room for objectivity. And there's a lot of room to just say, I don't really know what this is. So I'm just going to put it on the highest possible level of secrecy that I can. Yeah. This is interesting because I think the vagueness is definitely a

problem that leads to part of the bigger problem with classification and overclassification, which we're going to talk a lot about. But I also think that in a lot of cases, like this vagueness, this is one area where human, what was the word you used? Error? Objectivity. Where human subjectivity kind of has to come into play. And this is jumping ahead a little bit, but as far as what to classify as something, the way they decide that is how bad will it hurt America? Is it grave danger? What was the second one? Sort of like medium grave and then just danger. Ho-hum danger. And that's, and it's, you know, people have complained that like, well, that's not really spelled out, but I don't know if you can codify that to a T, like,

of how dangerous something is. I don't know. I believe that human subjectivity has to come into play. I'm not defending overclassification, but I don't know if this is one of those things that can be bureaucracized and legislated to the nth degree, you know? Well, that's ironic, because the whole reason this exists like this is because of bureaucracy, you know? Yes. But you make a good point, and I think that is ultimately the reason the driving force behind keeping things vague, because you couldn't possibly describe every situation and say, well, if this happens, then it would cause grave danger and you want to make it top secret, etc. Right. But like you said, the Espionage Act in 1917 was brought upon by the advent of World War

I. And this basically, like, they also, they already have sort of from the 1911 version had the vague terms that said, you know, you can't provide this information related to national defense to people who shouldn't have it, started out vague. But this is where the teeth came in as far as punishment goes. It was during wartime, so it was super harsh. Yeah. Remember, we talked before about Eugene Debs, who was the socialist candidate for president in the, I can't remember what election, but around World War I. And he ran his campaign from prison because he was put in prison for basically denouncing the U.S. war effort during World War I. And you could not speak out against the United States military, the United States itself, the United States Constitution.

You couldn't say anything critical about it. Or you could be put in prison and people were put in prison because of it. And they walked that stuff back, the First Amendment violations back. But the point is, is a big part of it was, it grew out of this idea that if you share state secrets, you can be seriously, harshly punished, like the Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs were. They were actually put to death under the Espionage Act. And it's still around today. Chelsea Manning, a reality winner, Edward Snowden, all of them were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, which basically says if you share any state, any classified information, you can be severely punished and lose years of your life in prison. Or again, ultimately put to death. I'm not sure

if that's still on the books, but it very well may be. So we should also talk about this other sort of precursor to what we have today, the system we have today, which was in 1869. And this addresses the technology kind of for the first time. The War Department, they brought out general order number 35. So cute back then, number 35. What they basically said, hey, there are cameras now that exist. So you can't be in a fort and take pictures of the fort or above the fort or around the fort, like no pictures basically anymore. And so they're acknowledging technology for the first time. And the other big thing was this is a peacetime move. So it's the first time, like, we weren't at war and sort of putting these rules into place. Yeah, because there are rules about

that kind of thing, like even dating back to the Revolutionary Army and the Continental Congress about this stuff. But this was a, that was a peacetime one. And that was significant because the classification system is a peacetime and now largely civilian system. But it found its roots in the military quite rightfully. I mean, even still today, even people who are highly critical of the American classified information system say it should basically be kept to military maneuvers, maybe State Department negotiations. And even then it should be a very short time. But the general consensus is yes, you would not want anyone understanding or knowing what your military was doing basically. Right. The first time that they sort of, or at least somebody,

started to say the word over classification. And, and the fact that they needed a sort of a tiered system was Brigadier General Arthur Murray, who was Chief of Artillery at the time, he wrote a letter to the Secretary of War that basically said, listen, all we've got is this one classification, it's confidential. And they're stamping everything confidential, even if it shouldn't be confidential. And that just, you know, if, if everything is being stamped this way, then it loses its meaning. So we have to, and they didn't call it over classification at the time really, I think that was just sort of the first person to mention this. But he said, what we really need is a tiered system of how classified it should be. And they're already doing this in Britain.

They have their four tiered system for your eyes only, for purchase eyes only, moon raker, live and let die, and gold member? No. Gold member. Gold finger. Gold member was a good one. Now, for your eyes only is the actual classification, then you have for the information of commission officers only, for official use only, and not for publication. And the Chief of Staff said, you know what, I think there's a great idea, this four tiered system is probably something we should use, but not these, not the way you're doing it. We need to be able to kind of make this up as we go to. It seems way too T-encrumpets to us. We need to come up with something else. Well, I think too rigid. It sounds like they wanted to be able to decide, be a little nimble with

how they classified things as they went. Yeah, because they, the system they initially came up with was to just basically put at the preface of say, like a manual or a document that says, this is only for, you know, this division or this, this armed services or this type of officer, this, whatever. And then it should not be, it should not be given to anybody else beyond them. And you could conceivably just do that for every single document. But the problem is, this was stuff that they were talking about in 1907, and America was still fairly small federal government wise. I mean, it was, it was growing big time after the Civil War, but compared to today, like the bureaucracy was just nothing like it is. And so you could

conceivably do that in the armed forces. But as, as things grew and the bureaucracy grew, and the government grew, it just became impossible to come up with this kind of thing for every single document and much easier to just say, this is this category, this is that category, and this is that category. Right. And that was, we should mention as a little sidebar, there was even one debate for a short time where they were coming up with the different classification levels where they wondered if they should even make up words, there weren't words. Right. I guess to make it even more confidential or confusing. But then they said, oh, wait a minute, this is, this is more confusing to us even. Right. And we don't want someone, you know,

high on the totem pole, which really means low, uh, not understanding what this word even means and then making a mistake because of that. Yeah. Like, let's use real words. Private piles, like red turtle doesn't sound very important. I'm sure I can tell everybody about that. That's right. So when you say private pile, do you mean Gomer pile or full metal jacket? Take your pick. Okay. Because you're both doing that. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about the atomic age and how that played in right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and

let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So it was all just kind of willy-nilly and the armed forces of America were figuring out how to set up their own classification system. And it was actually supported and codified.

Starting with one of those executive orders that came from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 with EO 8381. And it basically said, everything the military is doing is right. They've got some great terms over there. We've got some secret. We got restricted. We got confidential. Let's keep going with that. And it just kind of was, it was mainly coming out of the military and the military was figuring it out. But then like you said, the atomic age came along and the stakes became exponentially higher because we had different countries conceivably working on an atomic weapon, the likes of which had never been seen, the destructiveness of which had never been seen ever in the history of humanity. And like it just, things got real and the need for

secrecy got real. So much so that even before the Manhattan Project started, the scientists that were working on atomic research were keeping their research secret to themselves, like by their own, by their own like consensus, like they're like the public. We can't, we have to be careful publishing papers about this. Yeah. I think that's interesting that they just sort of knew to shut up about it. Even I would imagine within their own families, it was probably back in the day where they were like, daddy doesn't talk about what he doesn't work kind of stuff. And finally, when the Manhattan Project, the Manahatta Project, excuse me, officially got going, there was a dude, one lone man, General Leslie Groves, that kind of controlled the set

of rules for secrecy. And things got a little more codified at that point through him basically saying, you know, I'm going to use whatever means I have under the law and even outside the law to make sure this stuff stays a secret. But it wasn't until these executive orders started rolling in, I think they called stuff like restricted data and stuff like that, former restricted data, which actually was the progenitor of what would become declassification. But it was still a little willy-nilly in that it took the these executive orders and eventually Congress to really make this stuff law. And at the time, even within the Manhattan Project, it was still like this one guy saying here, we got to keep her to secret or I'm going to do something bad to you.

He was like the ultimate project manager. He was the sole person on the planet who understood everything that was going on with the Manhattan Project. Even the top scientists didn't fully have like the entire picture, only Leslie Groves did. He wouldn't let some of the top physicists working on the bomb talk to each other about their work. There was a tremendous amount of compartmentalization. Mail was read and censored. There's just tons of stuff that this guy was basically saying, we have to do these extreme measures to keep this under wraps. And once we enter the atomic age, you can't go back. So that his ideas about the secrecy needed and the measures you needed to take to protect atomic secrets eventually became the inspiration for how America's

classified information system was created. He created it inadvertently. He just basically came up with such a great, tight set of rules that when the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was created and they took basically atomic research and put it to like a government funded civilian research from the military, they said basically everything Groves was doing, we're just going to keep doing that and codify it. Yeah. And you know how I mentioned that he kind of inadvertently created declassification with the former restricted data. He also inadvertently created the derivative classified designation, which is basically if part of this project we're working on is classified, then it's all classified. Right. And we'll get into the different layers of classification later,

but it was like this whole thing is a big secret. It's not just you can't talk about this one thing and everything else is just, you know, whatever. Talk about it in the country club. It's no big deal. Right. Right. And so after that, so you've got Congress setting the punishment for sharing state secrets and then you've got Leslie Groves coming up with the kind of the framework for how to carry out a classified information system and protect information. And then you've got the president's succession of presidents starting with Roosevelt and then picked up by Truman in 1951, issuing executive orders that really kind of spell out how these classification systems are meant to work. And Truman had a top secret, the top secret category in 1951. And then the big one

was executive order 10290, which was also issued in 1951 that said, hey, it's not just the military who has secrets that they need to keep. Basically, all of the executive branch needs to be able to create secret and top secret information classifications. And he extended that power to classify information to basically every agency there was, including like the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education to create, to say, nope, this is classified, this can't be released. Yeah. They had to walk that back a couple of years later a little bit because people were worried that it was too broad and that too many people were classifying things and had access to it. So they reduced the number of agencies in 1953

with another executive order. And then what we ended up with was top secret, secret, confidential, and restricted. And should we talk a little bit about what you sent over, like how it literally works in practice? Yeah, I think that's a good spot for it. All right. So if you get a document and you, you know, let's say one day you get your, through a FOIA request, which we'll talk about later, Freedom of Information Act, you get your hands on a document and it says, you know, it might have the title right there with the letter U saying that it's unclassified at this point. But that's just the title. Yeah. Within the document, you're going to have different paragraphs are going to have

designations like one might say secret, one might say confidential, one might say top secret. And this whole thing rolls up to its initial top classification. So if part of it is top secret, then all of it is top secret. But I guess the deal is, is for future declassification, they want those des sub designations in there. Is that right? Yeah. To make it easier for the person, you know, sending the document out for a FOIA request to black out, you know, any, any paragraphs that are secret or top secret or confidential. Because part of me is like, if it's all rolls up to top secret, if one part is top secret, then what's the point of even subcategorizing it? But that does make sense.

So in this case, so you said that they might have the letter U next to the title. In that case, they're saying you can acknowledge the existence of this document and the title of this document, but the document itself is considered top secret. So you wouldn't, no one would be able to see it without a top secret clearance. Right. And then depending on what agency you're with, they also have different terms. I think the State Department says sensitive, but unclassified. The DOD and Homeland Security might use for official use only. And I guess the Parks Department says it'd be a whole lot cooler if you didn't mention this. Is that from Parks and Rec?

No, this is from my brain just now. Oh, I liked it a lot, Chuck. I like it even more now. I love the cuff, my friend. So those ones you just said sensitive but unclassified, these basically made up ones, those are to keep people like you and me from being able to see this stuff. Right. Which is a big problem, as we'll see with classified information and overclassification, is that the public is basically looped out by this whole thing. But they have a stamp that says no dopes.

Right. No grass. Oh, forget it. So one of the other things that we should say is that you talked about derivative classification, which we'll talk more about in a second. There's also original classification. And original classification says this new thing that we're talking about. Let's say somebody comes up with a new gun. Right. Somebody along the way will say, we don't want anybody to know about this gun. We certainly don't want to know how it works. So I'm going to deem this gun top secret. There's only a handful of people in the country who can do that. And it sounds like a lot, but when you really step back and think about it,

it's not that many. 2200 federal officials, typically who work in the executive branch, can declare something originally classified. That's just original classification. Yeah. And just quickly by the numbers, that's 2200 people can classify, and this is 2015 numbers, but more than 4 million people have security clearances, including 1.3 million with top secret clearance. Right. So those people, those other 4 million people who can see classified information, they're the ones usually who make derivative classifications. So when they come along and they say they're tasked with creating a handbook

or an instruction manual on using that new gun that just got a top secret classification, when they're making that manual, because they're talking about a top secret gun, that manual is top secret. Yes. That's a derivative classification. Now let's say you're emailing your co-worker about the progress on the manual. That email is top secret because you're talking about a manual that's top secret, because it's talking about the thing that was this gun that was originally deemed top secret. Now, if you're talking about millions of people with access to secret and top secret information, and they're all talking to one another, trying to make all this stuff work,

you can see how quickly that derivative classified information can explode exponentially. And in fact, it actually has over the years. Yeah. I mean, I guess we could go through them. Are you talking about the overclassification numbers? Yeah. Yeah. So the security, the information security oversight office reported six years ago that cabinet level agencies alone, this is not the military, classified more than 55 million documents. And then the public interest declassification board estimates that the

intelligence community, just by themselves, classifies multiple petabytes of data every year, which is about, a petabyte is about 86 billion pages, billion pages of either text or it points out a lot of that could be photographs and videos. But point is, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff. Yes. And that's just the classification. There's an entire other process for declassifying, and that can be pretty nebulous too. Supposedly nowadays, if somebody doesn't get a hold of this, and very few people are authorized to declassify stuff, apparently the president can declassify anything at any time, but there's procedures for other agency heads to declassify stuff. If they don't get a hold of a document and decide to declassify it, after 10

years, if it's not that big of a deal, it can automatically be declassified. If it's very sensitive, and again, none of this is defined, they're not saying like, really sensitive, like the MyLine Massacre documents, that kind of stuff you want to hang on to for 25 years. So, there's like a system involved or in place, but it's not a very good system. And even still, you're saying like, well, what is the stuff that can just be automatically declassified after 10 years? Should it even be classified in the first place, which is something we'll talk about too? Yeah. And the whole thing with the 25 years is like, what they're basically saying is, we want to wait long enough to where a lot of the people may be dead. Yeah. A lot of maybe the

statute of limitations could be up for any crime. Yeah. Or maybe people hopefully have just gotten over to enough to where they're not super mad about something. Right. It's really interesting. All this comes out of, shockingly, the last executive order on this kind of thing was from President Obama, which was in 2009, executive order 13,526, replaced all previous orders as far as classification goes. And I'm shocked that it wasn't thrown out and redone. It was a little shocking, isn't it? Yeah. I was just, I guess no one told the last president that Obama had the last word on that. Right. Yeah. I'm not sure how that got through. But that is when it moved things into top secret, secret and confidential. And then that's when it talked about whether it

was grave damage, serious damage or damage, and stuff like that. So that's sort of the last word on it. We also should mention there is a level above top secret called sensitive compartmented information. Yeah. And this is when you're within, if you have top secret clearance, they're like, yeah, but you can't even know this. Only people, these very few people that deal with this thing specifically can even know this. Right. That is an SCI designation. Sure. And that makes total sense. And it's a very general Leslie Grove's idea, compartmentalization of information. So that if you have top secret clearance and you're in the Department of Energy, they're like, no, you can't have access to this top secret weapons information has nothing to do with your job.

You can have all access to the top secret information about the Department of Energy's new like cold nuclear fusion reactor that we're secretly building. But no, you can't see this, this new gun design, which makes a lot of sense. But it really just kind of goes to show you how compartmentalized this classified information is even in the echelons of top secret clearance. Yeah. And within that Obama order, there are eight types of information that can be classified. I don't know if we need to go through all these, do we? No, not necessarily, but they generally all make sense to me though. Like there's not anywhere I'm like, oh, this one doesn't matter. It's like military stuff,

weapon stuff, foreign government stuff, yeah. Vulnerability of infrastructures. Just things you would not want an enemy to understand, which it makes sense. And yet this executive order, it may have cleaned up the process some, but it hasn't helped, it seems like. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's. All right. I'm in agreement on that, by the way. I don't want to keep people in suspense. And then we're going to come back and talk about what some of the problems are with overclassification. And there's a lot of them. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So overclassification is a thing. We talked about how many documents are classified each year, how many petabytes and billions and billions of pages of information and video and photos are classified. And there is a worry that's obviously been around for a long time that people are, and there's a lot of reasons and costs for overclassification. But one of the big reasons is that I think a lot of people don't want to be on the hook for it.

So they'll just default to classifying something. And one of the things the Obama order did was you had to have your name on it if you classified it. So at least they knew who it was and they could go back to when it came to challenging that classification. Right, which makes sense. That's good. They added some kind of accountability to it. Right, but what are some of these costs? Well, one of the big ones is corruption. Like if you keep secrets and you classify everything, like it's really fun to go look for examples of absurd overclassification. There's apparently some facetious plot to overthrow Santa Claus and some report on it was classified. They routinely classify menus at state

dinner banquets. Just stuff that does not need to be classified. It reveals just how if everything is classified, it makes it really easy to classify, which means that you can cover up just about anything by classifying it. And so it's a real breeding ground for corruption. Of course. It's a real breeding ground for authoritarianism as well. Because if you're allowed to do what you want and then cover it all up and make secrets and keep those secrets, then hide what you're doing, essentially, then that's just a breeding ground. That's a Petri dish for authoritarianism. Well, I saw another really interesting explanation about how it can breed authoritarianism from the outside, too, from a guy named

Sean Holman. He was a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. And he basically said, when you have a government that has overtly has a mountain of secrets that the public knows about, it creates uncertainty. And so people look for certainty, even if it's not truthful, they want it. They seek it out so anybody can come along and make up whatever they want about what the government's really doing or filling in the blanks in the public's knowledge. And people will hunger for that and listen to what that person's saying. And that can breed authoritarianism as well. Yeah. And, you know, another thing we failed to mention, and his problem with overclassification is they went so far with a Manhattan project

that Russia was tipped off because all of a sudden there was no science, no scientific papers coming out. And Russia was like, that can also be a bad thing because they were like all of a sudden, or the Soviet Union, I guess, was like, hmm, this is very interesting. There actually has been very quiet over there lately. So my spidey sense is going off. They haven't used the word Adam in quite some time. Another thing is that at Hinders Research, of course, we talked about the science. Science should be shared. And I know that people on, I know firsthand that people on the Manhattan project were frustrated by Groves and the fact that they couldn't even share stuff with other science departments. Yeah, like he just banned

them from speaking when they're finally relented and let Oppenheimer hold like weekly symposiums trying to hammer out problems that were just intractable. But even still, they were closely watched. And it was a difficult research climate from what I can tell. Sure. It's also a challenge when you're an agency like the CIA and you're not sharing information and things like 9-11 happen, possibly because agencies aren't sharing information or that they're not sharing that there were no weapons of mass destruction and we end up in war. So sharing of information between agencies is something that needs to happen more, I think. Yes. That was also a big problem on 9-11. I remember seeing on a few documentaries that came

around the 20th anniversary this past September where there was like real knowledge about a couple of the hijackers being in the United States and that they were a problem and we should be keeping tabs on them and the information was just not properly passed along. And I think the 9-11 commission settled on the idea that had this overclassification not hindered information sharing, there's a possibility that 9-11 would have been thwarted before it could have been carried out. Sure. Leaks is another big one because when you control the information and have all the information kept secret, you can also leak out bits of that information to wield as a weapon against a political enemy. And we've seen that happen time and time again. Yeah, like Valerie

Plame with Dick Cheney when he outed her to punish her husband for criticizing the Iraq war. Yeah, I think some of the Obama executive order is to protect whistleblowers too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and also to protect people who say this document is being overclassified when they bring it up to their superior, they should not be punished for that. Right. And I think the executive order even encourages people to not protest, but to question the classification of your superiors and to be allowed to bring that up. Yeah, you're supposed to be like, that's way off. You really screwed that one up. There's one other thing, Chuck, too, about leaks is that overclassification in a climate where

we're prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers like never before, that if we are classifying things that somebody would feel morally obligated to put their own self at risk to release to the public, should that stuff be classified? Should we be classifying that? And the answer is probably not that it's probably being covered up as what the classification is being used for. And yet, under the letter of the law, because this is classified information, the SB&AAC says that you can be prosecuted and spend years in jail for following your conscience. Yeah. That's another problem with leaks and overclassification. Yeah. And to fight overclassification is, I guess Ed points it out very plainly,

as a president, you're kind of in a knowing situation if one of your big mandates is to make a lot less things classified. You might win over some freedom of information enthusiast, but as a general rule, you're not going to do yourselves any political favors by going in there and being like, hey, you know what we need to do is declassify a lot of stuff and not classify nearly as many things. You're also going to upset the intelligence community greatly, I would assume. Oh yeah. That's a big part of it. But some people have said, okay, well, there's got to be some stuff we can do. Time limits is a big one. Yeah. There's a guy named Irwin Griswald, who I found in 1989 Washington Post op-ed, he wrote. He was the guy who prosecuted the Pentagon

papers on behalf of the government. So he prosecuted like to that time, the biggest leak of government secrets ever. And he came around years later and said, we're way overclassifying. He basically said like, there may be some basis for short-term classification while plans are being made or negotiations are going on. But apart from details of weapons systems, there is very rarely any real risk to current national security from the publication of facts relating to transactions in the past, even the fairly recent past. So to put a time limit, especially a short time limit on classified material, that would help a lot. Yeah. I mean, is he also the guy that said, if you know a lot about this system, then it's pretty clear that a lot of these classifications are to cover up

embarrassments. Yeah. He's one and the same. So that's not good. That's like, oh boy, this doesn't look good. So let's just classify it. And depending on who you talk to, estimates are anywhere from 10% to 90% of classified information can be put in the overclassified bucket. Yeah. And one of the things that he's saying and that that statistic says is that a lot of the reason classified material is classified is to loop the public out, either because Congress is being fed a load of BS by some lobbyists that don't want public input about what they're telling Congress, or there's a real concern that a lot of federal agencies can protect or do protect some of the corporations that they regulate from public scrutiny. That could be a really big issue

too, right? Oh, for sure. Like I think the FCC in the early 2000s said that they weren't going to allow reports about outages among wireless carriers to be made public out of a fear of it being a threat to national security. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of that stuff. The other one with the protecting the, with the Department of Agriculture protecting, I guess it depends on who you talk to if you want to think it's protecting, but food producers from if they introduce a food board and illness into the food supply, like they might not allow that information on like who it was to be released as a protective measure. And that's when it gets a little dicey. That in the FCC is like, I don't know. I mean, these are big public companies and you're talking about the

public good, but you're throwing like a shield around it and maybe that's not the best thing to do. And even still, you can take it to an even more extreme degree and right up to the CIA's doorstep and say, I've seen people argue that by looping the American public out about the secret torture program, the ghost prisons program, it kept the public from being able to hold the debate on whether this is something we want America to be doing or not. And that's a huge part of it, Chuck. I mean, like the basis of democracy is the public being looped in and then the government carrying out the wishes of the public. If you're looping the public out, then that's just the government operating and deciding on your behalf without any input from you whatsoever because you're being completely

kept in the dark. That is a huge basis of the classification system in America, sadly. Oh yeah. I mean, the agencies in the military, I think, firmly believe that the public is better off if they don't have any knowledge of this stuff and any opinion on what we're doing behind closed doors. Yeah. And I mean, they're like, what, do you want to know we're waterboarding people? And I think a lot of people would say, yeah, I would have liked to have known that. So I could vote it whoever was supporting that right out of office because I don't support waterboarding, even terrorists. And no one was given that opportunity. The public, even the people who agreed with it, weren't giving the opportunity to debate the merits of it in public because

everyone was kept in the dark. Yeah. And you might think, okay, well, I actually do agree with waterboarding terrorists. Well, that was something the CIA kept that you agreed with. What about all the other things that are kept secret that you don't agree with that as being kept out of your ability to debate? Yeah. The quick movie recommendation on that note, the new Paul Schrader movie, The Card Counter, fantastic. Oh yeah. Won't give away too much, but Oscar Isaacs plays a sort of a very solitary gambler poker player who is haunted by his past as a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib. Oh, wow. Okay. I'll check that out. And you know, Paul Schrader is still making these really, really, these still being Paul Schrader. So tough, challenging hardcore movies.

What else has he done? He wrote Taxi Driver. He also made a movie called Hardcore back in the, I think the 80s about, it's always just very grisly, grisly stuff. And he also did Meet Me in St. Louis. Like the last movie he did before this one was first reformed, the Ethan Hawke movie where he played the priest. I don't know if you saw that, but I guess I haven't seen any of his movies. I saw Taxi Driver. I thought that was lighthearted and fun. He used to write more movies and now he directs quite a bit. But he also wrote, I mean, he wrote Last Temptation of Christ and... Oh, wow. This guy's good. Raging Bull, American Jigolo, stuff like that. Love his stuff. Yeah. You know Paul Schrader. You just don't know him. I got you. Anyway, great movie recommendation,

but we were talking about secret prisons and it felt relevant. So, I mean, there's like a lot of things that people say, okay, you know, here's some fixes we can do. But it seems like it all kind of comes down to Chuck putting time limits on classified material and really raising the bar for what qualifies as a classified material or not. And then in conjunction with that, making the act of classifying material accountable. Like saying, like, if you overclassify, you're in trouble. Like there's something you're doing your job wrong and you're going to get fired or replaced. That those three things seem to kind of be the bottom line. And there seems to be almost no movement whatsoever on it. Yeah. And I think the other two that could be pretty impactful is make

declassification a real thing. Sort of like a practice and less like, well, someone has to submit a foyer request or really bug us. And then within that system, I mean, we could do an episode on foyer request, because if they don't want you to find out something, they can, they can sandbag you for years, they can put you off, they can release a document that is redacted, like 98% of it is redacted and go like, here, here's here's a bunch of adjectives. So, you know, I think making that real would help. But I don't know if anyone's going to have the the guts to kind of stand up to this stuff, because it's not a very electable position, you know? Well, my friend, I'm going to do you one better. We actually have done an episode on

foyer. Did we? I'm going to double check, but I believe we did. I know we've talked about it extensively. We have, we probably did. Yeah. So, you know, we don't even have to do that. We can just go back and listen to, yep, how foyer works. Okay. Well, in my defense in, in April, everyone, it'll be 14 years. That's true. And this was from like four or five years ago. So, don't, don't feel bad. I thought you were going to say like last week. All right. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good one. Yeah, agreed. Well, thanks to the Grabster and to all the people who wrote the articles that we use for research here. And if you want to know more about overclassification, seriously, if this struck you as at all interesting, there's a whole world

out there of debate about what should be classified and what shouldn't and how to fix this, that you might find interesting. And since I said you might find it interesting, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a court reporter. Oh, I like this one. This is a good one. This is a little lengthy, but I cut it down some. Hey guys, I'm sitting at my desk in the courthouse in North LA County and just finished listening to unsung heroes of the court and I am still beaming. I am a court reporter stenographer. I went to court reporting straight out of high school after taking a speed running class, just like Chuck. I learned about court reporting from a career day speaker that spoke to our class and knew immediately that this was the job for me.

I learned how to type on an old manual typewriter in seventh grade. Took typing every year because it was an easy A. By the time I graduated, I could type 65 words per minute. A couple of years later, I got my California court reporting license the age of 19. I turned 55 next month. So 35 plus years later, I'm still loving my career. Nice. We court reporters are truly unsung heroes in the courtroom. I often compare my job to a wedding photographer. Once everything is said and done, the transcript we create is all that remains and we're fairly invisible. So make sure you have a good one. Our steno machines are incredibly high tech equipped with Bluetooth communication for real time, simultaneous transcription

to laptops, iPads and the internet. We can access the transcript immediately for read back and clarification for the record, which is extremely useful to assist the lawyers, parties, the judge and juries. That said, we are in desperate need of more court reporters, guys. Tech schools lost their luster in an era where everyone felt the need to have a college degree. But just like bailiffs that we cherish in our own courthouses, court reporting school doesn't require a college degree. It just requires hard work and a dedication to your profession. And nerves of steel. That's right. I've never regretted my career choice and I thank you. Josh Chuck and Livia. Livia is for shout out. Yeah. For highlighting we court reporters

and the crucial role we play in the courtroom. That is from Linda Davidson, L.A. Superior court official court reporter and proud of it. Very nice. Thank you, Linda. That was a great email. I appreciate that one big time. That was a great idea for an episode too, Chuck. It turned out to be pretty, pretty good. And we heard from, I haven't heard from a bailiff yet, but we've heard from actually just a couple of court reporters, no sketch artist. That's right. They're quiet. Yeah, they're quiet. Oh, but get this. I was watching, oh, what case? I think the Ghislaine Maxwell case and clearly the sketch artists who had drawn that Tom Brady one that went viral, she was producing sketches for I think NBC's

National News. Oh, it's funny. I recognized your style. I was just looking at the one for the Elizabeth Holmes case this morning. And now when I see those, I'm like, okay, nice work. Looks good. Yeah, right. Well, thanks again, Linda. If you want to be like Linda and get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology

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