[Skybird]

Der Tagesspiegel has something more reasonable about all this dramissima:
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"Top Secret" Papers at Biden and Trump?: Why secrecy can also hurt

The document scandals are not about dangerous security breaches. They point to an exaggerated trend toward secrecy. An analysis.

Can it really be: Top-secret classified documents on which U.S. national security depends are turning up in the most amazing places? Which, moreover, are unguarded.

For example, in boxes in Joe Biden's private garage, just behind his vintage convertible, a 1967 Corvette Stingray that he is rarely allowed to drive. And in a closet next to Donald Trump's swimming pool at his hotel complex in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

The opposing party in each case is trying to turn the significance of the finds into a state affair: criminal handling of "top secret" documents. That is why special investigators, parliamentary committees of inquiry, and possibly even impeachment proceedings are imperative.
The damage caused by the blockade is likely to be greater

Of course, it could also be the other way around: A political spectacle is being staged here for election campaign purposes. The resulting damage to society is likely to be greater in the end than the potential damage if the alleged secrets in the papers were to reach the public and thus the hands of global political opponents - which has not been the case so far.

The dispute over the state documents, which ex-President Trump and ex-Vice President Biden stashed in private rooms and did not turn over to the National Archives after their respective terms in office, as required, will contribute to the fact that the House will hardly deal with substantive policy in the year and a half until the 2024 election. Instead, it will serve purely as an election campaign stage.

At the same time, this handling of the problem prevents another investigation, which would arguably be just as urgent. "The government classifies too many documents as secret," says Elizabeth Goitein, an expert on the limits of executive power at the Brennan Center for Justice. In doing so, both camps make it more difficult for the respective opposition and the media to scrutinize their government's actions.

What does the public even know about the contents of the documents? The claimed explosiveness thrives on the extensive use of the terms "classified" and "secret" and the widespread fantasy ideas about the unknown world of intelligence agencies. The image that ordinary citizens form of it is shaped more by spy novels and movies than by reality.

"Classified" means that a document may only be used internally and is not intended for the public. Decisive for the explosiveness, however, is in which of the subcategories it falls. In Germany, there are four: for official use only, confidential, secret or top secret.

So far, virtually nothing is known about the contents of the papers that have surfaced in Biden's private estates as well as former places of employment as vice president. In the case of the Trump documents, the state of knowledge is only slightly better.

What little is known indicates that the proportion of explosive classified material is small and does not suggest a deliberate withholding of "top secret" papers. The specific numbers vary. Of the 26 boxes full of documents seized in the latest search at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reports that among them were 11 files classified as "classified." And only one was marked "top secret". In it it concerns U.S. knowledge about the Iranian missile program, thus not information about own weapon systems or security gaps. In all, Trump had kept 300 "Classified" documents.

The material seized by the FBI is described by the "Washington Post" as follows: 13,000 documents, of which 103 were "Classified" and 18 "Top Secret".

The situation was similar in the affairs surrounding the U.S. documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and diplomatic reports that became public via Wikileaks. A large part of the alleged revelations had long been public knowledge, such as the civilian victims of military operations, including the outrageous Baghdad video.

More politically interesting is the two presidents' handling of the current allegations. Trump is stonewalling and obstructing justice. Biden's misconduct is far less, but he too is cheating. The first documents were found on Nov. 2, a week before the congressional election. He has admitted as much only now.
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There is a general trend in Western nations that governments try to escape from the observation by the public. They claim to fight for transparency, and in reality do all what they can to prevent it and keep their motivations, deals made, motives for decisions and connectons to persons as intransparent as possible. Same takes place on international level in international organsiations, namely the EU. And the ministries in Germany have just days ago been accused again to have fundamentally increased the obstruction of transparency in their internal structures, and that decision makers were called to no longer document their decisions and motives and associated events in digital or paper formats so that in later times their work and reasons for their decisions shall no longer be reconstructable. In other wordS: the obstruction is intentional, its not by flaws in the system, but it is wanted. You can bet money on that it is in the Us the same way. Add to all this the growin g gagging and intimdiaiton of politically non-conformal reporters and jpruanpists, and their limiting of access to sources. All what politicians then still need to escape any chance to ever be held accountable for anything uncomfortable for them is that they are gifted with the blessing of suffering from a short memory so that they can always say "I cannot recall this, I cannot remember that".