Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there on the download, and this is Stuff you should Know the podcast, the top Secret edition. Yes, exactly what you should know is decided by us. That's right, we give clearance. Clarence, well, that's a good one. I wouldn't have put that one together, but that's great. Thanks, So Chuck, we're talking about classified information, top secret information. A lot of people call it by especially if you're twelve years older younger, but it's actually a real thing. That's like a real designation top secret, which, by the way, I went back and watched that movie again for the first time in years, and it is hilarious. Yeah. I just made an airplane reference in Top Secret? Is uh saying that it's a Zuckers, right, Zuckers. Yeah. I think they worked with somebody different that time. I'm not sing what capacity, but the Zuckers were involved for sure. The Balcomer. That documentary on him, it is fantastic, by the way, I've heard, I have not yet to watch it. We just got through a made Have you seen made haven't seen made. It's a even after and you just like, I wonder what bad thing is going to happen to her next? I know something bad is going to It really wears you down like that for sure, but it's good. It's worth watching. Well, since we're on it with tv REX. Before we get going, I've been watching Station eleven and it's one of my favorite shows in years. Station eleven. What's it on HBO? It is a from a novel, a post apocalyptic virus actually pandemic weirdly, but it's more on the order of like of the Earth Died and but it's not the Road. It's it's more interesting, it's more hopeful and artistic. Cool. I'll check it out. Did you ever see The Leftovers? I think is what they were called. Well, what's funny is we were watching that too. We just started that because we were in that groove and we never saw The Leftovers, and I heard it was really good kind of and even got better through the years. I envy you. I wish I could see The Leftovers again for the first time. It's that. I'm really excited, dude. It's very good. All right, Now we should get to it because this is dense, so we're talking about Yes, it is super dense. I mean this Uh. We asked some help from Ed Grabanowski the grab Stir and he turned into James Missioner novel. It is so dense. Every paragraph is really dense. UM. And it's it's there's it's inevitable, Like just researching this one, there's so much to just go and read and so many rabbit holes to go down, because what we're talking about is really like simple concept on its face, Like there are secrets that like any government would not want other governments or other people are sometimes even their own people to know. It would just make the functioning of that government that much harder. Um, it might make the country vulnerable to attack. There's a lot of reasons why you would not want to share all of your business. So you want to classify information based on how damaging it could be to national security, and then you just decide who has clearance to see that those various classifications of information. That's it, that's classified information. But in practice, in reality, it's such a behemoth concept that is so fraught with problems, that is so often completely and utterly anti democratic. Um. And then it's just so bureaucratically layer that it is extremely it's an extremely dense topic. I just want to make sure we added a good extra three minutes onto this episode with that. Well, I think you know. The good news is the history can be condensed really easily into They had state secrets back in ancient times too, but back then it was a lot easier to keep secrets because there was no technology and there was no bureaucracy generally, So if the autocratic or semi autocratic leader said it was a secret, then it was a secret, and that was kind of the end of it. Um, things changed because of technology and because of bureaucracy, and because of the development of nuclear weapons when there was truly something so kind of world ending at stake that things needed to be ratcheted up. And this all started with a series of acts and even more so a series of presidential executive orders over the years to really sort of put these executive orders in place to vaguely say who can know what and how we're gonna do it. And then the acts come into play to say how are we going to punish people who do it the wrong way or don't do it? Yeah, and um, it's like you said, the executive orders are where the kind of classification and how thing are classified, how they become declassified, how that got all sorted out. But Congress has largely been left to figure out how to punish people who transgress against those those um sharing that information. And that whole thing started with the Defense Secrets Act of nineteen eleven, appropriately, which evolved into the Espionage Act. But you hit you. You use the word um that I think is really um, really important and really describes one of the big problems with the classification system in the United States, which is um, it's vague. The descriptions, the explanations, the rules are very vague and nebulous, and so there's a lot of room for objectivity, and there's a lot of room to just say, I don't really know what this is, so I'm just gonna put it on the highest possible level of secrecy that I can. Yeah, this is interesting because I think the vagueness is definitely a problem that leads to part of the bigger problem with classification and over classification, which we're gonna talk a lot about. But I also think that in a lot of cases like this, vagueness like this is one area where human uh what was the word he used? Error objectivity where human subjectivity kind of has to come into play. Uh. And this is jumping ahead a little bit, but like, as far as you know what to classify something, like the way they decide that is how bad will it hurt America? Is it grave? Danger um? What was the second one? Um? Sort of like medium grave and then just danger and that's and it's you know, people can have complained that like, well that's not really spelled out, But I don't know if you can codify that to a t like of how dangerous something is. I don't know. I believe that human subjectivity has to come into play. I'm not defending over classification, but I don't know. This is one of those things that can be bureaucracized and legislated to the to the nth degree. You know, well, it's that's ironic because the whole reason this exists like this is because of bureaucracy. You know, yes, but you you make a good point, and I think that is ultimately the reason the driving force behind keeping things vague, because you couldn't possibly describe every situation and say, well, if this happens, then it would cause grave danger and you want to make a top secret, etcetera. Right, But like you said, the Espionage Act in nineteen seventeen was brought upon by the advent of World War One, and this basically um like they also they already storted from the nineteen eleven version had the vague terms that said, you know, you can't provide this information related to national defense to people who shouldn't have it. Uh, started out vague, but this is where the teeth came in as far as punishment goes, because it was during wartime, so it was super harsh. Yeah. I remember we've talked before about Eugene Debs, who was the Socialist candidate for president in the can't remember what election, but around World War One, and he ran his campaign from prison because he was put in prison for basically denouncing the US war effort during World War One. And you could not speak out against the United States military, the United States itself, the United States Constitution. You couldn't say anything critical about it or you could be put in prison. And people were put in prison because of it. And they walk that stuff back, the First Amendment violations back. But the point is is a big part of it was. It grew out of this idea that if you share state secrets you can be seriously harshly punished like the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's were. They were actually put to death under the Espionage Act and it's still around today. Um, Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, Edward Snowden, all of them were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen, which basically says, if you share any state any classified information, you can be severely punished and lose years of your life in prison or again ultimately put to death. I'm not sure if that's still on the books, but it very well maybe. So we should also talk about this other sort of precursor to what we have today, the system we have today, which was in eighteen sixty nine, and this addresses the technology kind of for the first time. Um, the War Department. Uh, they brought out General Order number thirty five, so cute back then, number thirty five ledge. Uh. What they basically said, Hey, there are cameras now that exist, so you can't be in a fort, uh and take pictures of the fort or above the fort or around the fort, like no pictures basically anymore. And so they're acknowledging technology for the first time. And the other big thing was this is a peace time move, so it's the first time like we weren't at war and sort of putting these rules into place. Yeah, because there are rules about that kind of thing, like even dating back to the Revolutionary Army and the Continental Congress about this stuff. But this was a that was a peace time one, and that was significant because the classification system is a peace time and now largely civilian system, but it found its roots in the military quite rightfully. I mean even still today, even people who are highly critical of the American classified information system say it should basically be kept to military maneuvers, maybe state department negotiations, and even then it should be a very short time. But the general consensus is, yes, you would not want anyone understanding or knowing what your military was doing basically. Right. The first time that they sort of or at least somebody started to say the word over classification and and the fact that they needed a sort of a tiered system was Brigadier General Arthur Murray, who was Chief of Artillery at the time. He wrote a letter to the Secretary of War that basically said, listen, all we've got is this one classification. It's confidential, and they're stamping everything confidential even if it shouldn't be confidential, and that just you know, if if everything is being stamped this way, then it loses its meaning. So we have to And they didn't call it over classification at the time. Really, I think that was just sort of the first person to mention this. But he said, what we really need is a tiered system of how classified it should be. And they're already doing this in Britain. Uh, they have their four tiered system for your eyes only only, Moonraker Live and Let Die and gold remember no gold member Old Finger gold Member was a good one. Now for your eyes only is the actual classification. Then you have for the information of commission officers only for official use only and not for publication. And the chiefs of Staff said, you know what, I think it's a great idea. This four tiered system is probably something we should use, but not these not the way you're doing it. We need to be able to kind of make this up as we go to It seems way too tea and crumpets stuffs, so we need to I'm up with something else well, I think too rigid. It sounds like they wanted to be able to decide be a little nimble with how they classified things as they went. Yeah, because they the system they initially came up with was to just basically put at the preface of say like a manual or a document that says, this is only for you know, this division or this this um armed services, or this type of officer, this whatever, and then it should not be it should not be given to anybody else beyond them, um. And you could conceivably just do that for every single document. But the problem is that this was stuff that they were talking about in nine seven in America was still fairly small federal government wise. I mean it was, it was growing big time after the Civil War, but compared to today, like the bureaucracy was just nothing like it is. And so you could conceivably do that in the armed forces. But as as things grew and the bureaucracy grew and the government crew, um, it became impossible to come up with this kind of thing for every single document, and much easier to just say this is this category, this is that category, and this is that category, right, and those we should mention as a little sidebar. There was even one debate for a short time where they were coming up with the different classification levels where they wondered if they should even make up words. There weren't words, I guess to make it even more confidential or confusing. But then they said, oh wait a minute, this is this is more confusing to us even and we don't want someone you know, high on the totem pole which really means low, uh, not understanding what this word even means, and then making a mistake because of that. Yeah, so like, let's use real word. Private piles like red turtle doesn't sound very important. I'm sure I can tell everybody about that, that's right. So when you say private pile, do you mean gilmer pile or full metal jacket? Take your pick. Okay, so I'm both doing that. Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about the atomic age and how that played in right after this. Okay, chuck. So it was all just kind of willy nilly and the Armed Forces of America we're figuring out how to set up their own classification system, and it was actually supported and codified starting with one of those executive orders that came from President Franklin Roosevelt EOE, and it basically said, everything the military is doing is right. Um, they've got some great terms over there, we've got some secret, we got restricted, we've got confidential. Let's keep going with that. And it just kind of was it was. It was mainly coming out of the military, and the military was figuring it out. But then, like you said, the atomic age came along and the stakes became exponentially higher because we had different countries conceivably working on an atomic weapon, the likes of which had never been seen, the destructiveness of which had never been seen ever in the history of humanity. And like its just things got real and the need for secrecy got real, so much so that even before the Manhattan Projects started, the scientists that were working on atomic research, we're keeping their research secret to themselves, like by their own by their own like consensus, Like they're like the public, we can't we have to be careful publishing papers about this. Yeah, I think that's interesting that they just sort of knew to shut up about it, even I would imagine within their own families. That was probably back in the day where they were like daddy doesn't talk about what he doesn't work kind of stuff. And finally, when the Manhattan Project, the man i Hatta Project excuse me, officially got going, there was a dude, one one lone man, General Leslie Groves that kind of controlled the set of rules for secrecy and things got a little more codified at that point through him basically saying, you know, I'm gonna use whatever means I have under the law and even outside the law to make sure this stuff stays a secret. Um. But it wasn't until these executive orders started rolling in. I think they called stuff like restricted data and stuff like that former restricted data, which actually was the progenitor of what would become declassification. But uh, it's you know, it was still a little willy nilly in that it took the these executive orders and eventually Congress to really make this stuff law. And at the time, even within the Manhattan Project, it was still like this one guy saying, here, we can't we gotta keep her to secret or I'm gonna do something bad to you. Well, he was like the uh, like the ultimate project manager. He was the sole person on the planet who understood everything that was going on with the Manhattan Project. Even the top scientists didn't fully have like the entire picture. Only Leslie Groves did. Um. He wouldn't let some of like the top physicists working on the bomb talk to each other about their work. There was a tremendous amount of compartmentalization. Mail was read and censored. There's just tons of stuff that this guy was basically saying, we have to do these extreme measures to keep this under wraps. And once we enter the atomic age, you can't go back. So that his ideas about the secrecy needed, uh and the measures you needed to take to protect atomic secrets eventually became the the the inspiration for how America's classified information system like that was created. He he created it inadvertently. He just basically came up with such a great tight set of rules that when the Atomic Energy Act of ninety forty six was created and they took basically atomic research and put it to like a government funded civilian research from the military, they said, basically everything grows was doing, We're just going to keep doing that and codify it. Yeah, and you know how I mentioned that he kind of inadvertently created declassification with the former restricted data. Uh. He also inadvertently created the derivative classified designation, which is basically, if part of this project we're working on is classified, then it's all classified. Um. And you know, we'll get into the different layers of classification later, but it was it was like, you know, this whole thing is a big secret. It's not just you can't talk about this one thing, and everything else is just uh, you know whatever talk about in the country club. It's no big deal. Um. And so after that, so you've got um, Congress setting the punishment for sharing state secrets UM. And then you've got Leslie Groves coming up with the kind of the framework for how to how to carry out a classified information system and protect information. And then you've got the President's a succession of presidents starting with Roosevelt and then picked up by Truman in ninety one, issuing executive orders that really kind of spell out how these classification systems are meant to work. And Truman at a top secret the top secret category in nineteen fifty one. And then the big one, UM was Executive Order one oh two ninety UM, which was also issued in in nineteen fifty one that said, hey, it's not just the military who has secrets that they need to keep. Basically, all of the Executive Branch needs to be able to to create secret and top secret information classifications. And he extended that power to classify information to UM basically every agency there was, including like the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education UM to create to say Nope, this is classified, this can't be this can't be released. Yeah. They had to walk that back a couple of years later a little bit because people were worried that it was too broad and that too many people were classifying things and had access to it. So they reduced the number of agencies UH in nineteen fifty three with another executive order and then what we ended up with was top secret, secret, confidential, UH and restricted And should we should we talk a little bit about what you sent over, like how it literally works in practice. Yeah, I think that's a good spot for it. All right. So if you get a document and you you know, let's say one day you get your through a FOIA requests which we'll talk about later Free to Information Act. If you get your hands on a document and it says, you know, uh, it might have the title right there with the letter you saying that it's unclassified at this point. But with that, yeah, within the document, you're gonna have different paragraphs, are gonna have designate aations, Like one might say secret, one might say confidential, one might say top secret, And this whole thing rolls up to its initial top classification. So if part of it is top secret, then all of it is top secret. But I guess the deal is is for future declassification, they want those sub designations in there, is that, right, Yeah, to make it easier for the person you know, um sending the document out for a foyer requested blackout. You know, any any paragraphs that are secret confidential because part of me is like, if it's all rolls up to top secret, if one part is top secret, then what's the point of even subcategorizing it? But that doesn't make sense. So in this case, so you said that, they might have the letter you next to the title. In that case, they're saying, you can acknowledge the existence of this document and the title of this document, but the document itself is considered top secret, so you wouldn't No one would be able to see it without a top secret clearance, right, And then depending on what agency here with. They also have different terms. I think the State Department says sensitive but unclassified. Uh, the d O D and Homeland Security might use for official use only uh. And I guess the Parks Department says it would be a whole lot cooler if you didn't mention this is that from parks and wrecks from my brain just now. Oh, I liked it a lot, Chuck, I like my friend. So, um, those those ones you just said, sensitive but unclassified, these basically made up ones. Those are to keep people like you and me from being able to see this stuff. Which is a big problem, as we'll see with with classified information and over classification, is that the public is basically looped out by this whole thing, but they have a stamp. This is no dopes right, no grass, no forget so. Um. So, one of the other things that we should say is that there be you talked about derivative classification, which we'll talk more about in a second. There's also original classification, and an original classification says this new thing that we're talking about. Let's say somebody comes up with a new gun, right, somebody along the way will say, we don't want anybody to know about this gun. We certainly don't want to know how it works. So I'm going to deem this gun top secret. There's only a handful of people in the country you can do that, and it sounds like a lot, But when you really step back and think about it, Um, it's not that many federal officials typically work in the executive branch. Um can can declare something originally classified. That's just the original classification. Yeah, and just quickly by the numbers that's people can classify. But uh, and this is numbers, But more than four million people have security clearances, including one point three million with top secret clearance. So those people, those other four four million people who can see class of information, they're the ones usually who make derivative classifications. So when they start, when they come along and they say they're tasked with creating a handbook or an instruction manual on using that new gun that just got a top secret classification. When they're making that manual because they're talking about a top secret gun, that manual is top secret. Yes, that's a derivative classification. Now, let's say you're emailing your coworker about the progress on the manual, that email is top secret because you're talking about a manual that's top secret because it's talking about the thing that was this gun that was originally deemed top secret. Now, if you're talking about millions of people with access to secret and top secret information and they're all talking to one another trying to make all this stuff work, you can see how quickly that derivative classific is classified information can explode exponentially. In an fact, it actually has over the years. Yeah, I mean, I guess we could go through them. Are you talking about the overclassification numbers? Yeah, yeah, so, Uh, the Security the Information Security Oversight Office reported, uh, six years ago that cabinet level agencies alone uh this is not the military, right, classified more than fifty five million documents. And then the Public Interest Declassification Board estimates that the intelligence community just by themselves classifies multiple peta bytes of data every year, which is about a petabyte is about eighty six billion pages billion pages of either text or you know. It points out a lot of that could be photographs and videos, but the point is lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff. Yes, and that's just the classification there's an entire other process for declassifying, and that can be pretty nebulous too. Um Supposedly now nowadays if um, if somebody doesn't doesn't get ahold of this, and very few people are authorized to declassify stuff. Apparently the president can declassify anything at any time, but there's procedures for other like agency heads to declassify stuff. Um, if they don't get ahold of a document and decided to declassify it after ten years, if it's not that big of a deal, it can automatically be declassified if it's very sensitive. And again none of this is defined. Um, they're not saying, like, you know, really sensitive like the Myli massacre documents, Um, that kind of stuff you want to hang onto for twenty five years. So um, there's like a system and involved or in place, but it's not a very good system. And even still you're saying, like, what is the stuff that can just be automatically declassified after ten years? Should it even be classified in the first place, which is something we'll talk about two. Yeah, And the whole thing with the twenty years is like what they're basically saying is we want to wait long enough to where a lot of the people may be dead, a lot of maybe the Statute of Limitations could be up for any crime. Uh, or maybe people hopefully have just gotten over to enough to where they're not super mad about something. It's really interesting. Um, all this comes out of uh shockingly, the last executive order on this kind of thing was from President Obama, which was in two thousand nine. Executive Order thirteen thousand five six replaced all previous orders as far as classification goes, and UH shocked that it wasn't thrown out and uh and redone. It was a little shocking, isn't it. Yeah, I was just I guess no one told the last president that Obama had the last word on that, because UM, yeah, I'm not sure how that got through. But um, that is when it it class It moved things into top secret, secret and confidential. And then that's when it talked about you know, whether it was grave damage, serious damage, or damage and uh stuff like that. So that's that's sort of the last word on it. Um. We also should mention there is a level above top secret called sensitive compartmented information, and this is with when you're within if you have top secret clearance, they're like, yeah, but you can't even know this. Only people, these very few people that deal with this thing specifically can even know this, Like that is an sci designation. Sure, and that makes total sense, And it's a very general Leslie Groves idea compartmentalization of of of information, so that if you have top secret clearance and you're in the Department of Energy, they're like, uh, no, you can't have access to this top secret weapons information has nothing to do with your job. You can have all access to the top secret information about the Department of energies new like cold nuclear fusion reactor that we're secretly building, but no, we're you can't see this this new gun design, which makes a lot of sense, but it really just kind of goes to show you how compartmentalized this classified information is, even in the echelons of top secret clearance. Yeah, and within that Obama order, there are eight types of information that can be classified. I don't know if we need to go through all these doing no, not necessarily, but they generally all make sense to me though, like there's not anywhere I'm like, oh, this one doesn't doesn't make military stuff, weapons stuff, foreign government stuff, un vulnerability of infrastructures, just things you would not want an enemy to to understand, which it makes sense. And yet this executive order, it may have cleaned up the process some, but it hasn't helped It seems like, should we take another break? All right, I'm an agreement on that, by the way, I don't want to keep people in the suspense. And then we're going to come back and talk about what some of the problems are with over classification. And there's a lot of them, all right. So over classification is a thing. We talked about how many documents are classified each year, how many peta bites and billions and billions of pages of information and video and photos are classified. And there is a worry that's obviously been around for a long time that people are and there's a lot of reasons and costs for over classification, but one of the big reasons is that I think a lot of people don't want to be on the hook for it, so they'll just default to classifying something. Uh. And one of the things the Obama order did was you had to have your name on it if you classified it, so at least they knew who it was and they could go back to when it came to challenging that classification, right, which makes sense. That's good, they added some kind of accountability to it, right, But what are some of these costs. Well, one of the big ones is corruption, Like if you keep secrets and you classify everything, like it's really fun to go look for examples of absurd over classification. Um, there's apparently some facetious plot to overthrow Santa clause and some report on it was classified. They routinely classify menus at state dinner banquets, just stuff that does not need to be classified. It reveals just how if everything is classified, it makes it really easy to classify, which means that you can cover up just about anything by classifying it. And so it's a real breeding ground for corruption. Of course, it's a real breeding ground for authoritarianism as well, because if you're allowed to do what you want and then cover it all up and make secrets, uh, and keep those secrets then hide what you're doing essentially, then that that's just a breeding ground, that's a peatrie dish for authoritarianism. Well, I saw another really interesting UM explanation about how it can breed authoritarianism from the outside to from a guy named um Sean Holman. He was a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and he basically said, when you have a government that has overtly has a mountain of secrets that the public knows about, it creates uncertainty, and so people look for certainty, even if it's not truthful. They'll they'll they'll they want it, they seek it out. So anybody can come along and make up whatever they want about what the government's really doing or filling in the blanks and in the in the public's knowledge, and people will hunger for that and listen to what that person is saying, and that can breed authoritarianism as well. Yeah, and you know another thing we failed to mention and is a problem with overclassification is they so far with the Manhattan Project that Russia was tipped off because all of a sudden there was no science, no scientific papers coming out. And Russia was like that can also be a bad thing because they were like, all of a sudden, uh, or the Soviet Union, I guess, was like, m this is very interesting. They're they're actually that's been very quiet over there lately. So my spiy sense is going off, they haven't used the word Adam in quite some time. Another thing is that Hinder's research. Of course, Um, we talked about the science. Science should be shared, and I know that people on I know firsthand the people on the Manhattan Project were frustrated by Groves and the fact that they couldn't even share stuff with other science departments. Yeah, like he just banned them from speaking. When they're finally relented and let Oppenheimer hold like um, like weekly symposiums trying to hammer out problems that were just intractable. Um. But even still they were closely watched and it was it was a difficult research client meant from what I can tell, Uh sure. And it's also it's also a challenge when you're a when you're an agency like the c i A, and you're not sharing information and things like nine eleven happened possibly because agencies aren't sharing information, or that they're not sharing that there were no weapons of mass destruction and we end up in war. So sharing of information between agencies is it is something that needs to happen more. I think yes, that was also a big problem on nine eleven. Um. I remember seeing on a few documentaries that came around around the twentie anniversary of this past September, where there was like real knowledge about a couple of the hijackers being in the United States and that they were a problem and we should be keeping tabs on them, and the information was just not properly passed along. And I think the nine eleven commission um settled on the idea that that had had this over classification not hindered information sharing, there's a possibility that nine eleven would have been thwarted before it could have been carried out. Sure. Uh. Leaks is another big one, because you know when you when you control the information and have all the information kept secret, you can also leak out bits of that information to to wield as a weapon against a political enemy, and that you know, we've we've seen that happen time and time again. Yeah, like Valerie playing right with Dick Cheney when he outed her to punish her husband for criticizing the Iraq war. Yeah. I think some of the Obama executive order is to protect whistleblowers too, I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and also to protect people who who say this this document is being overclassified with they bring it up to their superior. They should not be punished for that, right. And I think it even and I think the Executive Order even encourages people to um, not protests, but to to question the classification of your superiors and to be allowed to bring that up. Yeah, you're supposed to be like, that's way off. You really screwed that one. Uh. There's one other thing, Chuck two about leaks is that UM over classification in a climate where we're prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers like never before. UM that that if we if we are classifying things that somebody would feel morally obligated to put their own self at risk to release to the public, should that stuff be classified? Should we be classifying that? And the answer is probably not. Um, that it's probably being covered up, is what the classification is being used for. And yet under the letter of the law, because this is classified information, that 'spionage Act says that you can be prosecuted and spend years in jail for following your conscience. Yeah, that's another problem with leaks and over classification. Yeah, and you know, to fight over classification is you know, I guess Ed points it out very kind of plainly, like as an as a president, you're kind of in a known situation. If one of your big mandates is to uh make a lot less things classified, like you might win over you know, some some freedom of information enthusiasts, But as a general, as a general rule, you're not going to do yourselves any political favors by going in there and being like, hey, you know what we need to do is declassify a lot of stuff and not classified nearly as many things. You're also gonna upset the intelligence community greatly. I would assume, yeah, well it's a big part of it. So but some people have said, okay, well there's got to be some stuff we can do. Um time limits is a big one. Yeah. There's a guy named Irwin Griswald who I found in Washington post op ed. He wrote he was the guy who prosecuted the Pentagon papers on behalf of the government. So he prosecuted, like to that time, the biggest leak of government secrets ever. And he came around years later and said we're way over classifying. He basically said, like, there may be some basis for short term classification while plans are being made or negotiations are going on, but apart from details of weapons systems. There is very rarely any real risk to current national security from the publication of facts relating to transactions in the past, even the fairly recent past. So to put a time limit, especially a short time limit on classified material, that would help a lot. Yeah. I mean, is he also the guy that said if you know a lot about this system, then it's pretty clear that a lot of these classifications are to cover up embarrassments. Yeah, he's one and the same. So that's that's not good. That's like, oh boy, this doesn't look good, so let's just classify it. And depending on who you talked to, estimates are anywhere from ten percent to nine of classified information can be put in the overclassified bucket. Yeah, and be one of the things that that he saying and that that Statistics says is that a lot of the reason classified material is classified is to loop the public out, either because Congress is being fed a load of bs by some lobbyists that don't want public input about what they're telling Congress or um there's a real concern that a lot of federal agencies can protect or do protect some of the corporations that they um that they regulate from public scrutiny. Um, that could be a really big issue too, right, Oh for sure. Like I think the FCC in the early two thousands said that they weren't going to allow UM reports about outages among wireless car carriers to be made public out of a fear of being a threat to national security. Which yeah, I mean there's a lot of that stuff. The the other one with the protecting the the Department of Agriculture protecting I guess it depends on you talked to if you want to think it's protecting but um food producers from if they produce a food board and illness into the food supply, like, they might not allow that information on like who it was to be released as a protective measure. And that's when it gets a little dicey that in the f CC, it's like, I don't know, I mean, these this is these are big public companies and you're talking about the public good, but you're throwing like a shield around it, and maybe that's not the best thing to do. And even still, you can take it to an even more extreme degree, right up to the CIA's doorstep and say, um, I've seen people argue that that you by looping the American public out about the secret torture program, the the ghost prisons program. Um. It kept the public from being able to hold the debate on whether this is something we want America to be doing or not. And that's a huge part of it, Chuck. I mean, like the basis of democracies, the public being looped in and then the government carrying out the wishes of the public. If you're looping the public out, then that's just the government operating and deciding on your behalf without any input from you whatsoever, because you're being completely kept in the dark. That is a huge basis of the classification system in America. Sadly. Oh yeah, I mean the the agencies in the military, I think firmly believe that the public is better off if they don't have any knowledge of this stuff and any opinion on what we're doing behind closed doors. Yeah, And I mean they're like, what do you want to know? Where where water boarding people? And I think a lot of people would say, yeah, I would have liked to have known that so I could vote it. Whoever was supporting that right out of office, because I don't support waterboarding, even terrorists. No one was given that opportunity the public, even the people who agreed with it. We're giving the opportunity to debate the merits of it in public because everyone was kept in the dark. Yeah, and you might think, okay, well I actually do agree with water boarding terrorists. Well that that was that was something the CIA kept that you agreed with. What about all the other things that are kept secret that you don't agree with? That as being kept out of your ability to debate? Yeah, the quick movie recommendation on that note, The new Paul Trader movie, The Card Counter Fantastic. Oh yeah, won't give away too much, but Oscar Isaacs plays a sort of a very solitary gambler poker player who is haunted by his pass as a former prison guard at Abu Grabe. Oh wow, okay, I'll check that out. So there. And you know, pauls Traders still making this really really, he's still being Paul Traders, so tough, challenging hardcore movies. What else has he done? He wrote Taxi Driver. Um. He also made a movie called Hardcore Back and I think the eighties about it's always just very grizzly, grizzly stuff. And he also did Meet Me in St. Louis. Like the last movie he did before this one was first Reformed, the Ethan Hawk movie where he played the priest. I don't know if you saw that, but because these are seen any of his movies, I saw a taxi driver. I thought that he used to write more movies and now he directs quite a bit. But he also wrote. I mean he wrote less Sentation of Christ and oh wow, this guy's good raging bowl American Giggilo stuff like that. I love his stuff. Yeah, you know, Pultrator, you just don't know him. I got you anyway, great movie recommendation. But we were talking about secret prisons and it felt relevant. So I mean, there's like a lot of things that that people say, Okay, you know, here's some fixes we can do. But it seems like it all kind of comes down to Chuck putting time limits on classified material and really raising the bar for what qualifies as a classified material or not, and then in conjunction with that, making the act of classifying material um accountable, like saying like like like if you if you over classify, you're in trouble, Like there's something you're doing your job wrong and you're gonna get fired and replaced. Um that those three things seem to kind of be the bottom line, and there seems to be almost no movement whatsoever on it. Yeah, And I think the other two that are could be pretty impactful is make make declassification a real thing, sort of like a practice and less like well someone has to submit a Fourier request or really bug us. And then within that system, I mean, we could do an episode on Foyer request because they don't want you to find out something. They can They can stand bag you for years, they can put you off. They can release a document that is redacted, like of it is redacted and go like here, here's here's a bunch of adjectives. Uh. So, you know, I think making that real would help. But I don't know if anyone's gonna have the the guts to kind of stand up to this stuff because it's not a very electable position. You know, Well, my friend, I'm going to do you one better. We actually have done an episode on for you, did we I'm gonna double check, but, um, but I believe we did. I know we've talked about it extensively. We have, we probably did. Yeah, so you know, we don't even have to do that. We can just go back and listen to yep, how foy it works. Okay, Well, in my defense in in April, everyone, it will be fourteen years that's true. And this is from like four or five years ago. So don't don't, right man. I thought you were gonna say, like last week, right, you got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a good one, yeah, agreed. Um, Well, thanks to the grabster and to all the people who wrote the articles that we use for research here. Um. And if you want to know more about over classification, seriously, if this struck you is at all interesting, there's a whole world out there of debate about what should be classified and what shouldn't and how to fix this, uh, that you might find interesting. And since I said you might find it interesting, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this court reporter. Oh. I like this one. This is a good one. This is a little lengthy, but I cut it down some. Hey guys, I'm sitting at my desk in the courthouse in North l A County and just finished listening to unsung Heroes of the Court, and I am still beaming. I am a court reporter. Stenographer. I went to court reporting straight out of high school after taking a speed running class. Just like Chuck, I learned about court reporting from a Career day speaker. I spoke to our class and knew immediately that this was the job for me. I learned how to type on an old manual typewriter in seventh grade. Took typing every year because it was an easy a By the time I graduated, I could type sixty five words per minute. A couple of years later, I got my California court reporting license the age of nineteen. I turned fifty five next month, so thirty five plus years later, I'm still loving my career. UH. We court reporters are truly unsung heroes in the courtroom. I often compare my job to a wedding photographer. Once everything is said and done, the transcript we create is all that remains, uh, and we're fairly invisible, so make sure you have a good one. Our Stuno machines are incredibly high tech, equipped with bluetooth communication for real time simultaneous transcription to laptops, iPads and the Internet. We can access the transcript immediately for readback and clarification for the record, which is extremely useful to assist the lawyer's parties, the judge and juries. That said, we are in desperate need of more court reporters. Guys. Tech schools lost their luster in an era where everyone felt the need to have a college degree. But just like bailiffs that we cherish in our own courthouses, court reporting school doesn't require a college degree. It just requires hard work and a dedication to your profession and nerves of steel. That's right. I have never regretted my career choice. And I thank you Josh, Chuck and Livia Olivia's first shoutout for highlighting uh we court reporters in the crucial role we play in the courtroom. That is from Linda Davidson, l a superior court official, court reporter and proud of it. Very nice. Thank you, Linda. That was a great email. I appreciate that one big time. That was a great idea for an episode to Chuck. It turned out to be pretty pretty good, and we heard from I haven't heard from a bailiff yet, but we've heard from actually just a couple of court reporters. No sketch rads, right, they're quiet, Yeah, they're quiet. Oh, but get this, I was watching Oh what case? I think the Gillaine Maxwell case, and clearly the sketch artist who had drawn that Tom Brady one that went viral she was producing sketches for. I think NBC's UM National News recognized her style. I was just looking at the one for the Elizabeth Holmes case this morning, and now when I see those, I'm like, Okay, nice work, it looks good. Yeah right right, well, thanks again, Linda. If you want to be like Linda and get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H