Who does NOT have classified documents? Anyone?

[badlatitude]

Retired Air Force Intel Boss Caught With Hundreds of Top Secret Docs at Homeg​

Amid seemingly endless revelations of classified government files turning up at the homes of certain sitting and former U.S. presidents (as well as veeps), a high-ranking Air Force officer has quietly admitted to retaining hundreds of highly sensitive documents at his Florida home.

Some of the information was classified at the Top Secret/SCI level, and laid out, among other things, capabilities and collection methods used by the National Security Agency (NSA), according to investigators. If ever exposed, the files “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,” prosecutors said in a plea agreement unsealed over the weekend and obtained by The Daily Beast.

Robert Birchum, 54, spent 32 years in the Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel in June 2018. During his career, Birchum served as the chief of combat intelligence for an unidentified Air Force group, and later worked with “classified intelligence information” at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), according to the plea deal, which was signed Aug. 26, 2022, but kept under wraps until now.

Some of the classified material Birchum accessed “concerned Department of Defense locations throughout the world, detailed explanations of the Air Force's capabilities and vulnerabilities, and, among other things, the methods by which the Air Force gathers, transmits, and uses information observed by various Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms,” the plea documents state. The Air Force has a long history with the NSA, and the service branch works closely with the agency on gathering signals intelligence worldwide.

Prosecutors said in a filing that Birchum “abused a position of public trust and used a special skill in a manner that significantly facilitated the commission and concealment of the offense.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/air-force-lt-col-robert-birchum-caught-with-top-secret-docs-at-home

No paywall
https://archive.is/4GNv2

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/air-force-lt-col-robert-birchum-caught-with-top-secret-docs-at-home

Classified information must be stored in a so-called Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or “SCIF,” which, as the plea deal explains, is “a room, building, or installation accredited by the United States government and designed to prevent as well as detect visual, acoustical, technical, and physical access by unauthorized persons and devices.”

Devices other than thumb drives, I'm guessing?

Sounds like Document A and Document B are NSA crown jewels and they wound up on a thumb drive. Florida Man and some other person accessed the thumb drive.

So I just want to make it clear that I have NOT seen the thumb drive and I'm not the mystery person.

 

[badlatitude]

Devices other than thumb drives, I'm guessing?

Sounds like Document A and Document B are NSA crown jewels and they wound up on a thumb drive. Florida Man and some other person accessed the thumb drive.

So I just want to make it clear that I have NOT seen the thumb drive and I'm not the mystery person.

The LTC is in a plea deal, so I imagine person number two is crapping their pants about now. It would be pretty pathetic if #2 is a foreign national.

 

[Lark]

Is the colonel a spy who didn't think the NSA had crawlers reading email, or a defense contractor capitalizing on his inside information to maximize profit? Will he keep his pension?

 

[Steam Flyer]

Is the colonel a spy who didn't think the NSA had crawlers reading email, or a defense contractor capitalizing on his inside information to maximize profit? Will he keep his pension?

If Michael Flynn has kept his title and pension, this guy is probably safe.

 

[Keith]

 

[Bus Driver]

Dog and the Faithful should be happy there is a search. The FBI is probably armed (they usually are), so that comes off the table. The big difference is in how the individuals have cooperated.

Biden lawyer: FBI searches Biden's Rehoboth Beach, Del. home​

 

[badlatitude]

Mike Pence subpoenaed by special counsel overseeing Trump probes: Sources

By Katherine Faulders and John Santucci
February 9, 2023, 6:01 PM

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

It's not immediately clear what information the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith is seeking, but it follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence's legal team.

Smith was appointed in November to oversee the investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the presidency and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them -- as well as a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A spokesperson for Pence did not respond to a request for comment by ABC News. The special counsel's office also declined to comment. A spokesperson for Trump also did not immediately respond.

Still developing. More: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mike-penc...sel-overseeing-trump-probes/story?id=97018886

 

[Gouvernail]

I recently found some papers among my old high school notebooks which were minutes of a Student Council Meeting. I guess I should call the current Student Council President and turn myself in for holding papers from when I was the SCP in 1969-70.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Our bloated government now classifies three things every second.

...
In my new video, Matthew Connelly, author of The Declassification Engine, explains that "as much as bureaucrats know they're only supposed to classify information that's really important, they end up classifying all kinds of nonsense….Even like telling a friend, 'Let's go have coffee.' They'll end up classifying that email as top secret."

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden once got a classified email saying "Merry Christmas."

For years, government classified how much peanut butter the Army bought. They classified a description of wedding rituals in Dagestan. They even classify newspaper articles.

They are especially eager to classify dumb things they do, like the Army's reported experiments testing whether "psychics" could kill people with their eyes.

"A lot of what the government keeps secret, they keep secret simply because it's embarrassing," says Connelly.

Occasionally, government tries to reduce the overclassification.

Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all pledged to reduce the excess.

"Not in one case did they actually reduce the rate at which our government was creating secrets," says Connelly. "In fact, the amount of secrecy only increased."

I'm not surprised. In government, butt-covering and status matter more than efficiency.

I say to Connelly, "I would imagine bureaucrats think, 'Ooh, if I label this classified, I'm more important.'"

"In Washington," he answers, "many officials won't even look at something unless it's classified."

And classifying something needlessly has no downside.

"In all my years of research," says Connelly, "I've never found a single instance of anybody being fired for overclassifying something."
...

If a Merry Christmas email is classified, does that violate separation of church and state?