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It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when P

by cronix 7y ago

It was very eye opening to me when I had a conversation with a family member who is retired CIA/NSA/Rand. Not a low level person. I was asking them about when President Clinton asked about the UFO's, and why the president was not told the answers he was seeking. Their reply: the presidency is not the highest security clearance and the president does not have a right to know everything. I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. And what happens when those people disagree with whoever is in office? They control what the president knows, as they are the ones who brief him, and only what "they" think is appropriate. They decide.

choult 7y ago
If that is indeed the case then I am very thankful for the past couple of years and next year.
PorterDuff 7y ago
The result is pretty simple. The intelligence agencies become a fourth branch of government and likely the dominant one. It would be interesting to better understand the dynamics between the military and the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc.. I suppose that one good thing that came out of the 2016 election was that it become more obvious that the intelligence services run their own domestic policy, what I don't understand is how monolithic that newish branch of government is.
WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
> the presidency is not the highest security clearance Presidents usually have the same clearance as the highest clearance. > the president does not have a right to know everything This is true, clearances are need-to-know compartmentalization. I was only briefed on stuff required for my job... and would often be told something was outside of scope.
dfxm12 7y ago
I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. FWIW, the founders didn't intend for presidents to have nearly as much power as they have today. Perhaps you can research intelligence operations during the Revolutionary War to glean some of their thoughts on how intelligence and the intelligence community should be set up. Of course, I don't know if our founding fathers were burdened with the task of maybe or maybe not covering up the existence of UFO's. :)
dx87 7y ago
Your family members were lying to you if they said that the president doesn't get to see whatever classified material they want. The president doesn't even have a security clearance like everyone else requires, they get to see whatever they want and can declassify anything they want.
- DanielBMarkham 7y ago
  Both of you are correct. Technically, the president can classify or de-classify anything they'd like to at any time. He is the sole and only person in charge of the branch of government responsible for this. Practically, over many years presidents have delegated this authority all over the place, and in such byzantine ways that most of the folks in compartmentalized projects wouldn't know that he had the authority -- and even if they did, they could just point to various laws and signing letters that make it less than clear how a president would go about declassifying anything. So yeah, in theory POTUS could take an afternoon off, walk down the street into a government building and declassify whatever he wants. That's why we fight so much over who gets the job: the illusion that these powers are present. In reality, however, if he could get the SS to allow him to take a walk (unlikely), he'd be stopped at the door of wherever he went (both by his own and that department's security services), and then the red tape nightmare would begin. By the time it was all over he'd be better off staying home and watching daytime TV. For what it's worth, and I hate using movies as historical examples, in the movie Nixon there was a great scene where Nixon went in the middle of the night to talk to protesting students. He wanted the war to end too, didn't they know that? It was contentious, but then one kid got it and said it aloud, something like "You don't have the power to stop it either, do you?" Nixon looked completely defeated at that moment. Seconds later he was dragged off by his security staff. Without getting into the veracity of that exchange, the gist of it is something we see confirmed over and over again in the historical record: large groups of administrators simply cannot be governed and instructed by one person, no matter what the documents technically look like. It's system itself that does the work and enforces the norms, whether it's General Electric or the NIS
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
I'd be hesitant to take what your family member said as doctrine, or that it's any different than any other Cabinet or other part of the Executive Branch. It's important to make the distinction that while the President doesn't know all of the things that the Intelligence Community is doing at any one time, there isn't anything that he can't know. It's no different in any other part of the cabinet - the Cabinet members and senior executive service all ultimately decide what hits the desk of the President, so in that sense there is an entire staff "controlling what the president knows." Same as any large organization. The DNI, DIRNSA, DCI, JS/J2 and all service 2's all work for the President, and they collectively are the ones who "know all the things" - so you can bet if he needs to know something, one of those people will give it to him.
- acqq 7y ago
  > there isn't anything that he can't know If he knew that "something" even exists! A former civilian nuclear war planner, I think while working for RAND, learned about the existence of the US military plan for the actions involving nuclear weapons: the plan specified the amount of nuclear response to any conflict, which is fundamental for anybody who has the power to resolve conflicts (a president) to know. But the civilians weren't allowed to know that the plan even existed: the planner also learned that no other civilian, including the people around the president and the president himself, even knew that the said plan existed: it's very existence was being actively hidden from "civilians." They also had a method for delivering them "something else" if the "civilians" asked "about" that topic. The military managed for years to operate (to be trigger ready) on the plans they kept completely hidden from anybody, including the president. The president or anybody around him had explicitly no chance to get that by their own initiative. Everything nicely documented in the book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." Read it and weep.

by cronix 7y ago

choult 7y ago

If that is indeed the case then I am very thankful for the past couple of years and next year.

PorterDuff 7y ago

The result is pretty simple. The intelligence agencies become a fourth branch of government and likely the dominant one. It would be interesting to better understand the dynamics between the military and the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc.. I suppose that one good thing that came out of the 2016 election was that it become more obvious that the intelligence services run their own domestic policy, what I don't understand is how monolithic that newish branch of government is.

WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago

> the presidency is not the highest security clearance Presidents usually have the same clearance as the highest clearance. > the president does not have a right to know everything This is true, clearances are need-to-know compartmentalization. I was only briefed on stuff required for my job... and would often be told something was outside of scope.

dfxm12 7y ago

I wonder if that's what the founders had in mind when they formed our government. FWIW, the founders didn't intend for presidents to have nearly as much power as they have today. Perhaps you can research intelligence operations during the Revolutionary War to glean some of their thoughts on how intelligence and the intelligence community should be set up. Of course, I don't know if our founding fathers were burdened with the task of maybe or maybe not covering up the existence of UFO's. :)

dx87 7y ago

Your family members were lying to you if they said that the president doesn't get to see whatever classified material they want. The president doesn't even have a security clearance like everyone else requires, they get to see whatever they want and can declassify anything they want.

DanielBMarkham 7y ago
Both of you are correct. Technically, the president can classify or de-classify anything they'd like to at any time. He is the sole and only person in charge of the branch of government responsible for this. Practically, over many years presidents have delegated this authority all over the place, and in such byzantine ways that most of the folks in compartmentalized projects wouldn't know that he had the authority -- and even if they did, they could just point to various laws and signing letters that make it less than clear how a president would go about declassifying anything. So yeah, in theory POTUS could take an afternoon off, walk down the street into a government building and declassify whatever he wants. That's why we fight so much over who gets the job: the illusion that these powers are present. In reality, however, if he could get the SS to allow him to take a walk (unlikely), he'd be stopped at the door of wherever he went (both by his own and that department's security services), and then the red tape nightmare would begin. By the time it was all over he'd be better off staying home and watching daytime TV. For what it's worth, and I hate using movies as historical examples, in the movie Nixon there was a great scene where Nixon went in the middle of the night to talk to protesting students. He wanted the war to end too, didn't they know that? It was contentious, but then one kid got it and said it aloud, something like "You don't have the power to stop it either, do you?" Nixon looked completely defeated at that moment. Seconds later he was dragged off by his security staff. Without getting into the veracity of that exchange, the gist of it is something we see confirmed over and over again in the historical record: large groups of administrators simply cannot be governed and instructed by one person, no matter what the documents technically look like. It's system itself that does the work and enforces the norms, whether it's General Electric or the NIS

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

I'd be hesitant to take what your family member said as doctrine, or that it's any different than any other Cabinet or other part of the Executive Branch. It's important to make the distinction that while the President doesn't know all of the things that the Intelligence Community is doing at any one time, there isn't anything that he can't know. It's no different in any other part of the cabinet - the Cabinet members and senior executive service all ultimately decide what hits the desk of the President, so in that sense there is an entire staff "controlling what the president knows." Same as any large organization. The DNI, DIRNSA, DCI, JS/J2 and all service 2's all work for the President, and they collectively are the ones who "know all the things" - so you can bet if he needs to know something, one of those people will give it to him.

acqq 7y ago
> there isn't anything that he can't know If he knew that "something" even exists! A former civilian nuclear war planner, I think while working for RAND, learned about the existence of the US military plan for the actions involving nuclear weapons: the plan specified the amount of nuclear response to any conflict, which is fundamental for anybody who has the power to resolve conflicts (a president) to know. But the civilians weren't allowed to know that the plan even existed: the planner also learned that no other civilian, including the people around the president and the president himself, even knew that the said plan existed: it's very existence was being actively hidden from "civilians." They also had a method for delivering them "something else" if the "civilians" asked "about" that topic. The military managed for years to operate (to be trigger ready) on the plans they kept completely hidden from anybody, including the president. The president or anybody around him had explicitly no chance to get that by their own initiative. Everything nicely documented in the book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." Read it and weep.