It’s no secret at this point that disgraced former President Donald Trump took some very serious, highly classified government documents and materials as part of the massive, now infamous stolen document scandal — when Donald made the decision to help himself to the federal government’s variety of top-secret information at the end of his highly tumultuous presidency, boxing up hundreds of documents and materials with clear, blatant classified markings and hauling it all to his Mar-a-Lago resort with him, where he proceeded to hide those materials and repeatedly lie to the federal government about possessing them at all.
Suffice it to say, we’ve known for some time that Trump was holding onto government documents and materials that carried severe implications for this nation as a whole — and as more and more details have come to light in this case, we’ve come to realize just how severe it truly is.
But, former CIA official and George Mason University Hayden Center director Larry Pfeiffer has now penned an unsettling column for The Bulwark, in which he broke down and explained exactly what type of government documents the ex-president pilfered and stashed away at his Palm Beach golf resort turned post-White House home — and it’s crystal clear now that Donald J. Trump blatantly put this country’s national security in grave danger.
Of most interest in Pfeiffer’s column was his clear note of prosecutors’ recent revelation that many of the “top secret” documents stolen by the ex-president actually go far above and beyond a top-secret classification level. It turns out that much of this material was actually part of “special access programs” — a program used for a type of intelligence that is so serious and so secretive that prosecutors in the document case were forced to redact even the codenames included in the documents because even without any connecting information included, the names alone could put military and intelligence officials in mortal danger.
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The former CIA official writes:
These included documents about the nuclear capabilities of another country, military attacks by a foreign country, the military capabilities of a foreign country, the timeline and details of an attack in a foreign country, the regional military activity of a foreign country, the military activity of foreign countries and the United States, and military activity in a foreign country. And as sensitive as the subjects of those documents are, what was really put at risk by our former commander-in-chief were the nation’s most sensitive activities and information derived from them.
These are programs or activities so sensitive they require enhanced safeguards and the strictest access requirements. Even those who go through the arduous and sometimes years-long process of obtaining a Top Secret clearance often require additional security adjudication for to gain access to SAPs. Details of SAPs are usually limited to the bare minimum number of people with a ‘need to know.’ Some are divided into several compartments with individuals given access only to those compartments requiring their expertise or knowledge; only a select few — a dozen or so, maybe fewer — might have access to the totality of the SAP.”
Pfeiffer explained that information found in SAPs includes research on new, experimental weapons systems, which, if landed in the wrong hands, could give US adversaries what would essentially be clear-cut instructions on how to destroy our capabilities and defenses. It would also offer information regarding active spies to foreign enemies, leading to critical operations being compromised, deaths of countless operatives, and a heightened difficulty in recruiting new operatives due to the dangerous risk. The ex-CIA official further noted Trump’s possession of documents that contained classified information, detailing the “planning, execution, and support” of elite US military operations, such as the raid that took out Osama bin Laden.
Pfeiffer noted that at least 8 of the government documents Trump has been charged with stealing are likely to contain at least some SAP information — including information from what he described as “unacknowledged” SAPs, materials and intel so deeply secretive in nature that their reference in classified.
“It may be months or even years before a jury determines whether the former president is guilty,” the former CIA official wrote in conclusion. “The president, his lawyers, and his political supporters will make legal arguments about the Espionage Act, the Atomic Energy Act, and the constitutional powers and privileges of the presidency … But ultimately they are independent of the more important consideration: Trump endangered our national security, putting us all at greater risk, and must be held accountable.”
Read Pfeiffer’s full piece in The Bulwark here.
Featured image via Petty Officer 1st Class Dominique A. Pineiro
