The FBI raid on former national security adviser John Bolton last Friday for alleged mishandling of classification was suspect from the start. At least if the president’s critics are to be believed. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) described the raid as “another step in Trump’s march toward authoritarianism.” And Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) called the raid “chilling.” Across Washington, debates over who might be next became a favorite parlor game. The timing of the Bolton raid was also suspect as it coincided with the release of the Justice Department’s transcript of its recent interview with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
All this cynicism may be justified, but there may also be another motive: By seeking to pin on Bolton the same crimes of which the Biden administration accused President Donald Trump, the president and his Justice Department might be both purposely trivializing the crimes and conditioning the public to see the accusations as political and specious.
There is something to the argument that the government cynically uses classification issues to target political enemies. During the first Trump administration, the CIA purposely pulled clearances of National Security Council appointees to knock presumed critics of the agency out of key positions. It was bureaucratic warfare at its finest, but its masterminds miscalculated the long-term damage they did to trust in their institution and the clearance process.
Bureaucratic warfare comes into play in other ways. When I worked as a desk officer in the Defense Department more than two decades ago, the State Department’s security shop investigated one of its own employees, someone ironically working under Bolton in the State Department’s arms control shop, for allegedly leaking an unclassified document to colleagues in the U.S. government. Their goal was to stymie Bolton and keep the Pentagon from preparing fully for certain policy debates.
As a young desk officer against the backdrop of highly polarized debates about the Iraq War, I recognized the danger. I had a top security clearance but made a point of not accessing any top secret or even secret intelligence. Twice, State Department or CIA officials told investigators, and outside journalists and bloggers, that they suspected me of leaks. Both times, I was able to prove not only that I had not accessed the intelligence but that I was not in the cities or countries where the leaks occurred. Three-hour interviews ended after only 10 minutes.
The shamelessness of the journalists who participated in such partisan games, and coordinated them in groups like “JournoList,” tarnished faith in their outlets and editors, an epiphany that was not unique. That the media cite the criminality of leaks to punish some but then celebrate other leakers only highlights hypocrisy and cynicism.
Selective investigation is not the only problem. Many documents that are classified do not deserve to be. The main reason to classify documents is to protect sources or methods. Yet, often the White House and State Department classify reports to prevent political embarrassment. Security managers should call out this practice, as it does not make their lives easy and creates broad confusion, if not disrespect, about what is really classified.
Make no mistake, however. Trump’s possession of classified material was illegal. Sloppiness is not exculpatory. So too was former President Joe Biden’s possession of some materials. Perhaps both hoped to write books and needed reminders. The tendency of former officials to pen accounts about their time in government is narcissistic and often undercuts U.S. interests by exaggerating their roles. The damage CIA official Kermit Roosevelt Jr. did by creating a false and exaggerated narrative in his book Countercoup of the 1953 ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh is a marquee example. Still, Washington is full of narcissists, and he is not alone. Many officials, therefore, keep unclassified diaries to jog their memories. They do not steal documents.
THE LEGAL CASES AGAINST TRUMP THAT REMAIN IN LIMBO
Trump appears guilty, though the case faltered upon a technicality, not upon the dismissal of the evidence. Perhaps to defend his legacy and normalize the extraordinary FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump now repeats and normalizes it.
Bolton is simply a bit player of convenience.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.