Good morning. The U.S. government classifies tens of millions of documents a year, and experts say the practice is excessive. |
 | | The National Archives is asking former presidents and vice presidents to look for classified items.Mark Tenally/Associated Press |
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Classified documents keep turning up in the homes of former presidents and vice presidents. First, law enforcement found hundreds of them in Donald Trump's home. President Biden's aides recently gave back classified documents that were found in his office and home, dating to his time as vice president and senator. And last week, Mike Pence's aides found classified documents in his home. |
After all of these discoveries, the National Archives asked former presidents and vice presidents yesterday to look through their personal records for any documents that should not be there. |
The three cases have important differences. Notably, Trump resisted efforts to retrieve the documents, while Biden and Pence returned them voluntarily. But they have all raised the public's awareness of what has long been a government phenomenon: Current and former officials at all levels discover and turn over classified documents several times a year, The Associated Press reported. |
Why does this keep happening? One possible reason, experts say, is that too many documents are classified in the first place. The federal government classifies more than 50 million documents a year. It's difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of all of them. Some get lost and found years later — and many more are likely still out there. |
Today's newsletter will look at how the over-classification of government documents became so widespread. |
The government classifies all kinds of information, including informants' identities, war plans and diplomatic cables. There are three broad categories of classification: confidential, secret and top secret. Technically, the president decides what is classified. But the job is delegated to cabinet and agency heads, who further delegate, through agency guidelines, to lower-ranked officials. |
That system effectively encourages federal officials to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach to classification. The classification of a document reduces the risk that important secret information leaks and leads to trouble, particularly when it concerns national security. But if a document is not classified and is obtained by America's enemies or competitors, the people who originally handled that information could lose their jobs, or worse. |
In many agencies, officials "face no downsides for over-classifying something," said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and former special counsel at the Pentagon. "But if you under-classify something, really dire consequences could come for you." |
So officials tend to play it safe. Of the more than 50 million documents classified every year, just 5 to 10 percent warrant the classification, Hathaway estimated, based on her experience at the Pentagon. |
One example of the extremes of classification: In a cable leaked by Chelsea Manning, an official marked details of wedding rituals in the Russian region of Dagestan as "confidential" — as if most such details were not already well known in a region of more than three million people. |
Presidents have criticized the classification system, too. "There's classified, and then there's classified," Barack Obama said in 2016. "There's stuff that is really top-secret top-secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source." |
In 2010, Obama signed the Reducing Over-Classification Act. It didn't solve the problem, experts said. |
So what's the harm? Experts say there are several potential dangers to over-classification. |
For one, it keeps potentially relevant information from the public, making it harder for voters and journalists to hold their leaders accountable. One example: Starting in the 2000s, the U.S. ran a highly classified drone program to identify, locate and hunt down suspected terrorists in the Middle East and South Asia. The program's existence was well known, and the destruction it caused was widely reported. Yet elected officials, including members of Congress briefed on the program, could answer few questions from constituents or reporters about it because the details were classified. |
Over-classification can also make it difficult for agencies to share information with others, whether they are other U.S. agencies or foreign partners. "There are national security concerns — in terms of information not getting shared that should be," said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. |
And, of course, the recent discoveries show how hard it can be to track all of these classified documents. "We've just overloaded the system," Goitein said. "And that makes slippage inevitable." |
Related: How the government handles classified information, explained. |
| | The Death of Tyre Nichols |
 | | A vigil in Memphis yesterday for Tyre Nichols.Brad J. Vest for The New York Times |
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- Five fired Memphis police officers were charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, who was hospitalized after a traffic stop this month.
- Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, had a 4-year-old son and a passion for skateboarding.
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- The city has been bracing for today's release of a video of the fatal encounter, which one law enforcement official described as "absolutely appalling."
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- A man who drove a truck down a Hudson River bike path in 2017, killing eight people, was convicted of murder. He could face the death penalty.
- The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River probably won't agree on cuts. The Biden administration may have to impose reductions.
- China is arresting people who joined protests against the government's zero-Covid policy.
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 | | The Brooklyn Banks in 1989.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times |
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Lives Lived: Paul La Farge's novels and short stories defied easy categorization. In works like "Haussmann: Or the Distinction" and "The Night Ocean," La Farge played with history and with narrative techniques. He died at 52. |
| SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC |
A fresh start: Executives are departing the U.S. men's soccer program. Their replacements are crucial as a talented squad begins preparation for the 2026 tournament. |
A hire: The Carolina Panthers announced Frank Reich as their head coach, opting for the former Colts head coach over interim coach Steve Wilks. |
 | | Mercedes Jimenez-Cortes recently purchased a traffic mirror for her apartment.Marilyne Moja Mwangi for The New York Times |
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The bulging convex traffic mirrors that hang in parking garages and on the sides of school buses are meant to reflect blind spots and maximize safety. They're also all over TikTok, part of Gen Z's latest approach to the self-portrait. |
The mirrors turn an everyday scene surreal, bending concrete as if it were jelly and exaggerating the size of a subject's face, iPhone and outfit. And friends can crowd easily into their reflection, ensuring no one is left out. "It looks funny," Mercedes Jimenez-Cortes, 24, said. "But it looks funny on purpose." |
Whether they realize it or not, these selfie-takers are part of a long lineage of youthful distortion, from the fish-eye lenses of 1990s music videos to the "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" painted by the artist Parmigianino, around age 21, in 16th-century Italy. |
 | | Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. |
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"Words are the only victors": Salman Rushdie has a new novel nearly six months after being attacked. |
The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were availability, livability and viability. Here is today's puzzle. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German |
P.S. A blizzard stranded drivers, knocked out power and killed scores of people from the Midwest to the Appalachians 45 years ago this week. |
Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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