For once I totally agree with Mafoo. If anybody should be aware of this stuff, it should be people who are most directly accountable to the voters, the people in the House of Representatives and also the Senate. Plus it is a checks and balances issue. I mean the people in the House are up for reelection every two years, and the Senate has staggered terms so a third are up for reelection every two years.

The worst kind of big government is militaristic big government without transparency. Bureaucratic, civil style big government may be bad, but it isn't dangerous.

And the Bush Administration was horribly mistaken in its approach of making just about everything a secret. When everything is a secret, the secrets that actually need to be secret lose their value. It all becomes a bunch of meaningless paperwork locked away in archives that no one ever investigates. Not to mention you lose the trust of the voters.

I mean the federal wiretapping scheme became such a Nazi-SS style secret that even the people who were supposed to be using the program to stop terrorists couldn't cut through all the red tape. It frankly rose to the level of self-parody, secrecy for the sake of keeping secrets. I don't even understand how a conservative or liberal person could stand for something like that.

I disagree vehemently. I do not trust Congress at all. Politicians are corrupt enough as is.

You trust bureaucrats who aren't directly accountable to the voters more?

If senators traded in our nations secrets we'd find out about it.  Then they'd be screwed.

I think everyone here knows I don't trust government. But if government is doing something (good or bad), it is the custodians of the government's responsibility to manage it.

How do you expect them to do there job, if the don't have all the facts? Plus, I bet things would go a lot different in Washington, if none of them could ever use the excuse "I didn't know".

The answer to "I didn't know" in Washington, should always be "It's your responsibility to know. Not good enough".

By the way, everyone in congress holds a clearance high enough to be privy to the information we are talking about (I used to as well). The issue is not if they can be trusted, but that information at that level is always on a "need to know" basis. I think they all need to know.

Not necessarily. It's a paradox really. I think that heavily privlieged information shouldn't be made available because William Jefferson (Louisiana Senator) was able to swing all the African American vote. I do think that our government can't make decisions without knowing all the facts, but they're more than happy to pass the stimulus bill without knowing knowing all the facts about it.

What a dick!

@TheRealMafoo,

Thousands of people with high level clearances? Yes.  Thousands of people with high level clearance and direct knowledge of the majority of our nation's TS/S information? Most definitely not. It's called compartmentalization and is an essential element to protecting sensitive information both in the effort to limit its potential for exposure (particularly in regards to a breadth of information) as well as to restrict the scope of any necessary investigation into a leak.

I would agree we could do better than our current set of elected officials where it concerns character but that really just makes my point that much more important.  But beyond that the issue is that these people do not actually need to know the detailed information about what is going on in order to do their job. That's not to say that high ranking committee members can't have specific information on cases relevant to their committee's current work, but that only in those situations should that detailed info be shared and under no circumstances should the detailed info be shared to the entire congress. Keep in mind that most of these operations have non-TS/S info that all of congress is made aware of but that specific operational, structural, and sensitive policy information is what is classified TS/S.

I would say your view of everyone in washington being genuine in their concern for the nation is fairly naive but there is really no way to tell for sure.  And the fact that there is no way to tell for sure means that we must err on the side of caution when dealing with TS/S information.  More to the point these people are among the largest security risks to TS/S info because they have the exact wrong personality type for a clearance, even with the best of intentions they are high risk.

@outlawauron,

That's the thing, it's not like congress is completely in the dark, there are members from the appropriate comittees (both parties) who are briefed and know what is going on in order to guide policy (where possible), provide oversight, and to provide guidance to members of their party without having to spread detailed information throughout the entireity of congress. 

Having the required clearance is not by itself sufficient reason to be given access and the argument that they "need to know" doesn't apply here as there has to be a specific need for a piece of information in order for it to be shared.  Need to know doesn't apply generally...thats exactly how it doesn't apply actually.  The current state of information sharing is the proper extent of the need to know policy balanced against the need for oversight. 

Give me an example of something that could be classified TS/S, that Congress does not need to know.

I'm not sure I would classify CIA agents as bureaucrats but I trust them to keep information secret more than I do the entireity of congress.  More to the point these people aren't given the entire breadth of information but instead agents only have information specific to a specific area and even then only as it is directly relevant to their ongoing work.