[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by GGG

Thanks for the thoughts Lanny.

No worries.

I still struggle with the president doesn’t know if we have bodies and materials. I follow the argument that everything is compartmentalized to minimize leakage.

It's a real thing. How would the Secretary of State not know what the security posture was at an embassy? Too much detail for their responsibilities. They have people for that and then that information is sensitive and is need to know. How would they not know where possible black sites would be operating? Beyond the scope of their job and plausible deniability. In government you are only provided information specific to your job and only what you need to know. Curiosity is not a reason for access to information. See what happens when you allow someone like Trump, who does not understand nor care about the norms of government, to have access to sensitive information. Compartmentalization is there for those reasons.

But walk me through why the president wouldn’t know if we have bodies and materials right now. [/QUOTE]

Need to know. Does this information have a bearing on the duties of the office. No. No reason for this information to be shared. Curiosity is not a reason for the release of top secret information regardless of position.

So these videos get reported publicly. The president asks for a threat assessment on these vehicles. He asks if we have any information on the strengths and weaknesses of these vehicles. If we have any information on who is piloting and where they come from. Asks if they have ever taken any hostile actions against citizens How do the answers to those questions that I think a president would naturally ask in order to make informed decisions on what course of actions need to be taken not lead to the president knowing if we have bodies and materials.

The threat assessment will cover the questions of interest and come from likely the military or intelligence communities, who will already be compartmentalized and working from incomplete information pertaining to the existence of these black programs. The military would be able to answer questions specific to information on their programs, and the intelligence community would be able to answer questions specific to intelligence gathering and analysis, but the information you're digging into would be beyond the scope of the assessment and remain compartmentalized. The president can ask all the questions he wants about the existence of such programs, but unless there is an existential crisis with a need to know, the information is going to be beyond their reach. It is how secrets are kept and how plausible deniability is afforded to the office.

And one other thought I’d be interested in your opinion on. If this is top secret US Tech or another countries top secret tech would the president know that?

That would be up to the department to share that data and for them to properly handle/release the information as per the classification and handling standards in place. The whistleblowers have suggested that if it were advanced tech that information would be/has been shared with the president and even with other departments in the military where contact has taken place (according to Grush and others this has happened and NDAs are signed by those involved). A recent example was the Chinese weather balloon. That was disclosed through proper assessment and classification procedures (an no, a president cannot just declassify information at his whim).

Thinking about it a bit the biggest reason for secrecy from the public being required would be that another state actor has surpassed the US. This is a worse scenario than aliens for confidence in government.

This is no doubt a concern and something they would take into consideration in competing the threat assessment from the intelligence community and involving all aspects of information gathering they have (HUMINT, SIGINT, CYBINT, GEOINT, MASINT, and OSINT). The US has a huge advantage in this regard but other countries are catching up. This is where other nation states and their security practices become a point of discussion. Does the US have HUMINT assets or CYBINT products that can be used to confirm or deny the existence of programs such as this by other nations? Do the other nation states have the same to use against the US? Do other nations have the level of compartmentalization the United States leverages?

For example, the CIA handles most clandestine information gathering, but not on US soil. That goes to NSA so the two have similar programs and objectives in many ways, but they operate independently and blindly of each other. Compartmentalization at its most ridiculous. Same can be said of DOJ and law enforcement (FBI) and so on. The systems are setup to maintain secrets, not share them. It's why government operates the way it does and why it can be so inefficient at times.

Now the reason for secrecy is usually not about the release of information but the probable outcomes from the release of information. When Trump shared the photo of the Iranian missile site during his time in office there was a ripple through the intelligence community about it, but not because the information was released. They were more concerned that other nation states would put together how the images and intelligence was acquired. Release of certain information can get people killed and effective programs shut down, consistent with the compromise or assassination of CIA assets shortly after Trump left office and the beginning of documentgate.