President Biden and former President Trump both appear to have left office with a substantial quantity of classified documents in their possession. According to this timeline, in Trump’s case, it took about four months after his departure from the White House before the National Archives reached out to his lawyers about “original records” they were trying to track down - and it wasn’t until January 2022, a full year after Trump left office, before they (NARA) discovered that the records they had retrieved from his estate contained classified material.
In Biden’s case, AIUI, he has been in possession of classified documents since the end of the Obama administration in January 2017 - over five years.
I’m not interested in the Presidents and their mistakes or malfeasances here. Instead, I’m wondering about how the rest of the government keeps track of classified documents. Is it like a library, where you check out materials under your name, and there’s a due date? Is there not someone who is tasked with following up on overdue documents in a timely fashion, i.e. maybe a few days later rather than a few months/years?
Can only speak of my experience many many moons ago. We had a security officer, and the documents were in a safe. You signed the documents out, used them for what you needed for the day and put them back in the safe at the end of your shift. No way you were taking them home with you. This was on Secret docs for a contracting company. I would imagine that most facilities work in a similar fashion. It appears that may not be the case with the White House though.
This ^^^, but it seems the White House plays fast and loose with the regulations because nobody wants to say no to a President or Vice President.
Navy viewpoint here: All material Secret or above is logged in and is then signed out to whoever will have custody of it. Periodic inventories are conducted, and the person conducting the inventory (in my experience, always a senior radioman for Secret, and an officer for TS) had to actually sight every item – the officer who “owned” a manual couldn’t just say “Yeah, it’s here in my safe.”
In your experience, roughly how often was “periodic”?
Every few months, but I’ve been retired 19 years so I don’t remember details.
It’s possible that the White House sets up secure document storage (SCIF?) at the private home of a POTUS or VPOTUS.
It isn’t just possible; wherever the President (or Vice-President, if the prez deems access to particular information necessary) is they need to be able to receive classified information including briefings, assessments, reports, et cetera, as well as potentially making classified Executive Orders and other formal instructions. This is generally done in a more portable manner, with a courier transporting documents in a secure container, and with highly critical TS/SCI material the container may actually be designed destroy the contents Mission Impossible-style (more or less) if not opened by an authorized person. However, once document are in the possession of the President, he or she may essentially do what they wish with them, including declassifying them, because the President is the ultimate authority. Presidents (and often their staffs) are often infamously lax in their handling of classified data as are Congresspeople on intelligence committees which feeds into a tendency for agencies to want to restrict the information that is provided to a minimum.
For us normal plebes, Secret and Top Secret paper documents have to be logged by the facility with the appropriate custodian who is responsible for storing them in a secured safe; all access to the safe is logged, but reviewing individual documents within typically is not unless the information is Special Access Project (SAP) data. Electronic documents are logged into a secured computer or air-gapped network and all access to the system is logged and activity monitored. Facility Security Officers much prefer electronic documents because they are much easier to control and destroy versus physical inventory of paper documents, and so there is a push to eliminate as much classified paper documentation as possible for reasons that must be evident given the recent scandals.
As to why Biden had classified documents in his private office at Penn State after he exited public life, there are a few potential explanations. He may have been doing work requiring access to classified materials; presidents and vice-presidents are often given courtesy access to classified information pertaining to their legacy for the purpose of writing memoirs, et cetera, and may also do some informal consultation with current leaders requiring access to classified materials, typically at the direction of the current President). It may also be that classified materials got accidentally mingled with unclass documents, which is why it is highly recommended to not bring unclass material into a SCIF and take every possibly measure to avoid this from occurring. This may not have been Biden’s personal doing; again, White House staff are often less than cautious about handling material and much of the paper that passes thru the “office” of the President or Vice-President is not actually handled by the executive, but it is ultimately Biden’s responsibility to ensure that all classified materials were correctly handled and returned. As his lawyers made a voluntary disclosure it was clearly not an intentional breach and the appropriate measures were taken to address a “data spill” but it is still a violation of classified material protocols and not a good look given his criticisms of Trump over similar issues.
Stranger
Part of the problem is that POTUS and VPOTUS are not just accessing classified documents, they and their offices are generating classified documents at a very high rate. Daily briefings, transcripts of phone calls, etc. If and to what level material needs to be classified is not clear at the time of creation. I can see a logistical nightmare.
I’s be amazed that classified documents weren’t inadvertently removed by past presidents only to be quietly returned upon discovery or upon request from the Archives.