{"id":89354,"date":"2023-01-16T14:40:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T20:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=89354"},"modified":"2023-01-16T14:40:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T20:40:12","slug":"89354","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=89354","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

As a senator, Joe Biden helped kill President Jimmy Carter\u2019s CIA director nominee because he allegedly mishandled classified materials.<\/a><\/p>\n

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and his supporters have sought to downplay the significance of the improperly handled and stored classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank where Biden maintained an office. The documents are believed to relate to his time as vice president under Barack Obama. But then it emerged that another batch of classified documents was recovered from Biden\u2019s personal garage at his home in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.<\/p>\n

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have defended his transfer of classified materials to his resort at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the president had authority to declassify the materials. That case is also the subject of a federal investigation.<\/p>\n

It is a barely concealed secret in Washington, D.C., that for decades, elite politicians have engaged in some form of bending or breaking the rules on classified documents \u2014 in some cases for plausibly benign uses as writing memoirs. Bill Clinton\u2019s former national security adviser Sandy Berger stole documents from the National Archives in 2003 by stuffing them inside his clothing and then destroyed some classified materials. He claimed he wanted to review the documents to prepare for his testimony before the 9\/11 Commission. Gen. David Petraeus was forced to resign as CIA director in 2012 after it was revealed he had improperly handled classified materials, including taking some to his home and sharing them with his biographer with whom he was having an affair.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While there have been cases where criminal charges have been brought \u2014 Berger was fined $50,000 by a federal judge and lost his security clearance, and Petraeus got two years probation and a $100,000 fine \u2014 it is rare for a high-profile figure to face any meaningful criminal consequences for such actions. That, of course, is not the case with whistleblowers \u2014 including Reality Winner, Jeffrey Sterling, Terry Albury, and Daniel Hale \u2014 who have been aggressively prosecuted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.<\/p>\n

The revelation that Biden illicitly stored classified materials, including in his garage, is a grave embarrassment to the president, particularly in light of the fact that Democrats have hammered away at Trump for months over the classified documents he retained at Mar-a-Lago. But there is also a relevant story from Biden\u2019s past that bears mentioning.<\/p>\n

THE EVENTS TOOK place during the administration of Jimmy Carter, when Biden was a rising star in the U.S. Senate and an inaugural member of the Intelligence Committee, which was established in response to the lawlessness of the Nixon administration. Biden colluded with Republicans on the Intelligence Committee to kill the nomination of a CIA critic to be director of the agency. Among the reasons was that the nominee, Ted Sorensen, had admitted to taking classified documents for a biography of his longtime friend John F. Kennedy and had spoken out in defense of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In fact, Biden went so far as to suggest Sorensen might be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act.<\/p>\n

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\nAs The Intercept reported in its special series \u201cEmpire Politician: A Half-Century of Joe Biden\u2019s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA,\u201d Sen. Biden campaigned aggressively for President Carter, but he later made clear that he was never a big fan of the famously liberal president. When Carter nominated Sorensen as CIA director, the national security establishment in Washington was apoplectic. Sorensen had no foreign policy experience and was out of place in the world of covert ops. Carter had said that he wanted an outsider for the CIA post as part of his pledge to reduce the agency\u2019s power and budget.<\/p>\n

Sorensen\u2019s nomination came after a campaign in which Carter promised to wage war against the agency\u2019s \u201cexcessive secrecy\u201d and to expose and punish CIA officers who broke the law. \u201cWe must never again keep secret the evolution of our foreign policy from the Congress and the American people,\u201d Carter declared. \u201cThey should never again be misled.\u201d Carter ultimately failed to achieve many of his promises regarding the CIA, but the mere fact that he made such statements caused grave concern within the agency and among many Republican lawmakers. This conflict broke out into the open during Sorensen\u2019s confirmation process.<\/p>\n

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\nBiden assured Sorensen that he would help guide him through the process. As Sorensen recalled, Biden had led him to believe that he had the senator\u2019s \u201centhusiastic\u201d support, telling him that he was \u201cthe best appointment Carter has made.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Sorensen came under attack from Republicans, though, Biden shifted his position and went out of his way to dig up an episode from Sorenson\u2019s past that would serve as a red flag against his confirmation. Sorensen had given an affidavit in Ellsberg\u2019s case, in which Sorensen acknowledged that many officials in Washington, including himself, would take classified documents home to review and that officials often leaked far more sensitive documents to the press without facing prosecutions.<\/p>\n

Biden said he learned of the affidavit, which was never filed in court, from a Republican colleague and assessed that the Republicans on the committee would seek to use it to discredit Sorensen. Biden had his staff scour documents and Sorensen\u2019s books to find the unfiled affidavit, and an aide who was involved with the Pentagon Papers case eventually located it. This, combined with other concerns, including allegations that Sorensen was a pacifist who dodged the Korean War draft, put the nomination in peril. \u201cIt was like being blindsided by a truck,\u201d Sorensen said, describing the campaign against him as an effort where \u201cmany little dirty streams flowed together to make one large one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a phone call with Carter after confirming the document, Biden said, \u201cI think we\u2019re in trouble. I think it is going to be tough.\u201d As it became clear that the nomination was doomed, Carter offered an uninspired defense of Sorensen\u2019s comments on classified documents with a public statement, \u201csaying it would be \u2018most unfortunate\u2019 if frank acknowledgement of common practice should \u2018deprive the administration and the country of his talents and services,\u2019\u201d according to a press report.<\/p>\n

At Sorensen\u2019s confirmation hearing, Biden laid into the nominee. \u201cQuite honestly, I\u2019m not sure whether or not Mr. Sorensen could be indicted or convicted under the espionage statutes,\u201d Biden said, questioning \u201cwhether Mr. Sorensen intentionally took advantage of the ambiguities in the law or carelessly ignored the law.\u201d Biden biographer Jules Witcover later wrote: \u201cAs a result of these and other complaints against Sorensen, and behind-the-scenes pressure from Carter, the old JFK speechwriter agreed to have his nomination withdrawn.\u201d Sorensen later said Biden should be awarded the \u201cprize for political hypocrisy in a town noted for political hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a senator, Joe Biden helped kill President Jimmy Carter\u2019s CIA director nominee because he allegedly mishandled classified materials. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and his supporters have sought to downplay the significance of the improperly handled and stored classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank where Biden … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hypocrisy","category-irony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89355,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89354\/revisions\/89355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}