• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Congress>
  3. us intelligence>

U.S. Intelligence efforts

Stephen E. Herbits
July 10, 2023
U.S. Intelligence efforts
Getty Images

Stephen E. Herbits is an American businessman, former consultant to several Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of Defense, executive vice president and corporate officer of the Seagram Company, advisor to the President's Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets, and secretary general of the World Jewish Congress. He was the youngest person to be appointed commissioner on the Gates Commission. Herbits' career has specialized in "fixing" institutions – governmental, business, and not-for-profit – with strategic planning and management consulting.

Three recent events converge to remind us of the importance of U.S. Intelligence operations. It is past time the public became engaged in a discussion of the risks of our own electronic behavior and government’s historic failures.


The most prominent is, of course, our former President’s abuse of and failure to protect the U.S. and its foreign supplied intelligence. The second is the recently published and thoroughly brilliant book by Calder Walton, “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West.” The most recent is the July 3rd New York Times article: “Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain.”

Familiarity with the existential issue we face comes, in part, from the indictment of our former President for his uncontrolled and irresponsible behavior with classified documents while in office and after his departure. We don’t have to wait for a jury decision that may be months, if not years, ahead to know what he did was criminally negligent… or worse.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But why did he do it?

His repeated displays of disregard certainly weren’t done because he was smart. Even our enemies thought his carelessness was risky and stupid, not to mention the problems his behavior created for critical intelligence we need from our allies.

He certainly didn’t use our classified intelligence to negotiate. What has he negotiated? It is important to recall that even as a businessman, he didn’t negotiate. He simply paid his development contractors less than he owed them (or didn’t pay them at all), forcing hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits. What international organizations did his rare appearances reveal his personal negotiations to benefit the U.S. and the free world? The absence is startling. His foreign policy was the destruction of several multinational organizations.

It is obvious that there is only one criteria Trump uses to make decisions: his ego. His flashing classified documents about and boasting about it proves this. And we’ll certainly be able to conclude that with hard evidence from his upcoming trials.

But the U.S. can’t wait until then. A public discussion, not about the contents of classified information, nor about Trump personally, but about the processes of handling classified information is necessary to protect our national security in the modern era… are long overdue. Here are ten thoughts to be considered in that public discussion that might then lead to Congressional action:

1. Screen candidates for relevant elective positions. That is something the American Bar Association doesn’t even do competently for our Federal judges and Justices.

2. Withhold highly sensitive material from anyone who abuses the classification system, including a president, unless particular highly sensitive information is needed for his specific approval for operational purposes.

3. Screen the Group of 8, the Chairman and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee and restrict that information from any of them that cannot pass a very tight investigation, and if abused even once, deny any further information regardless of their titles.

4. Any office holder – elected or not – found to have abused the system should be moved to positions with no capability of access to such information. In the case of a president committing such acts, classified information should become the responsibility of the vice president.

5. Modernize clearance processes to eliminate the vast backlog. The exact number of temporary clearances awaiting full review is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands (at least it was in the early 2000s) given that the requirement also applies to certain private sector companies doing business with the U.S. government.

6. Test the system by providing designed false information to various holders of classified information to test the efficacy of systems.

7. Sharply increase the compartmentalization of information.

8. Change counter-espionage efforts, leaving officials in that process for short times only. History tells us that the greatest harm has been done by some who have been in their jobs for long periods, including in the counterintelligence offices. Enhance counter-espionage efforts with the requirement that copies of all tax returns for those with access to classified information be provided to the a proposed newly expanded counter-intelligence group, who can then selectively examine lifestyle expenditures for random individuals. Additionally, It would be wise to create a second all-government counterintelligence office. Competition between or among them will enhance our security.

9. Sharply increase enforcement and penalties.

10. Provide the FISA Court (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that now has responsibility for issuing classified warrants), the ability to hold trials with access to classified information and adjust the legal processes to include evidence requirements and punishment related not only to the level of classification, but the assessment of damage done.

From Your Site Articles
  • Deciding what's a national emergency needs to be the work of two branches ›
us intelligence

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Dave Anderson

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Stephen E. Herbits

Conservatives attacking Americans’ First Amendment rights

Steve Corbin

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff
latest News

America’s greatest resource- Education

William Natbony
29 September

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Ken Powley
29 September

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Priya Iyer
28 September

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Leland R. Beaumont
28 September

How statelessness gambles with the lives of American families

Samantha Sitterly
27 September

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September
Recommended
America’s greatest resource- Education

America’s greatest resource- Education

Big Picture
Grand Canyon gap in America today

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Elections
The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Big Picture
There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Big Picture
Advancing human rights, worldwide

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Big Picture
Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Big Picture