Waxman: White House All Thumbs With Classified Material

We knew from the Valerie Plame leak that the White House isn’t exactly diligent with classified information. And we learned from Dick Cheney’s claim that he’s a fourth branch of government that he didn’t really care who knew. But check out what Rep. Henry Waxman found.

In a letter today to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Waxman disclosed numerous instances of sloppiness with classified material by both the president and the vice president’s retinues, as well as what White House security officers told Waxman is a “systematic breakdown” in responding to security breaches. Indeed, according to Waxman, over half of the staff of the White House Security Office — which is charged with protecting secrecy guidelines alongside the Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office — have quit over the last year.

To give the most baroque examples, Waxman’s investigation found White House officials leaving classified material “unattended in a hotel room” as well as plopped on their desks at work. Typically, the White House Security Office did nothing in response.

Situations like these were typical:

In another example described to my staff, a junior White House aide reported that a senior assistant to the President improperly disclosed “Sensitive Compartmented Information” to the junior aide, even though the aide had no security clearance. Although SCI is the highest level of security classification, the White House Security Office took no steps to investigate or take corrective action. …

One example cited by the officials involved security procedures in the White House sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF). The security officers said that Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson habitually brought their Blackberry devices and cell phones into the SCIF in the White House Security Office in violation of the rules. The officials said that (White House Security Office head James) Knodell and (WHSO Deputy Ken) Greeson also allowed others, such as visiting White House personnel, to bring their Blackberries and cell phones into the SCIF. According to the officials, these improper practices were allowed to continue even after security officers repeatedly informed Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson that the practices violated security rules and set a poor example.

According to the security officers, the poor management and bad examples set by Mr. Knodell and Mr. Greeson caused extreme frustration and plummeting morale among White House security officers, resulting in the departure of more than half of the White House security officers within the last year.

Now recall that the White House in 2003 and 2004 threw a fit over allowing 9/11 Commission chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton access to highly classified presidential briefing materials. It’s safe to say that neither Kean nor Hamilton took their Blackberries into the SCIF.