During his recent trip to Ireland to explore his family’s roots, courtesy of the American taxpayer, by the way, Joe Biden was asked about the current revelations surrounding highly classified government intelligence information being leaked into the public realm. Joe Biden responded to the reporters’ question by saying, “It’s not a big deal.”
That five-word response is one of the scariest comments I’ve ever heard uttered by any government official when discussing a compromise of classified information, much less the guy occupying the Oval Office in the White House.
The reason it’s so scary is that it tells me one of two things. Either Joe Biden is absolutely clueless about the importance of protecting Top Secret information from public disclosure and compromise to our enemies, as evidenced by his own compromise of classified documents in his garage (and who knows where else, his sock drawer maybe?), or Joe Biden didn’t really know what the reporter was asking him about. He was clueless. (Unlike the famous baseball player ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ who was a great baseball player, now we have ‘Clueless Joe Biden’ who has proven himself to be inept, incompetent, and corrupt.)
The second possibility is even more frightening because it tells us that Joe Biden is too cognitively deficient in understanding what’s going on around him. He clearly isn’t being fully briefed by his senior staff as a result of that. The person with our nuclear codes is being kept in the dark by his staff. Or he simply doesn’t fully understand his primary responsibility, which is to protect and defend the United States of America. Our country’s national defense is likely in the hands of unelected White House staffers whose own loyalty is undetermined or Joe Biden, who can’t remember whether he put his pants on each day.
Fortunately, the FBI has made an arrest in this recent compromise case, and the individual has been identified as an Air National Guardsman who held a Top Secret security clearance and had access to the leaked information as a result of his job.
But this calls into question how someone as irresponsible as this Airman obviously is, was granted a high-level security clearance in the first place. It brings to mind the case of Bradley Manning, the enlisted member of the Army who released a trove of classified documents compromising highly sensitive information. (Only to later have his prison sentence commuted by Barack Obama.)
Manning was viewed as a deficient recruit during the Army’s initial Basic Combat Training. He was considered FUBAR (look it up). He was simply unable to meet the demands all Army recruits are required to do in order to satisfactorily complete upon entry into the Armed Forces. At that time, he should have been discharged from the Army “for the good of the service.” But he wasn’t. Someone, perhaps multiple people in his chain of command, sighed off on him graduating Basis Training, and he was sent on his way to do irreparable damage to our national security.
As a result of Manning’s actions and now this most recent case, a damage assessment will have to be completed to try to determine the extent of harm that’s been done to our national security. Indeed, all of the classified documents found in Joe Biden’s possession, as well as former President Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence, will also need to be evaluated to determine what damage may have been done.
The question that comes to my mind is how a twenty-one-year-old man serving in our Armed Forces was able to access highly sensitive information that was clearly outside of the scope of responsibility for his job. As with Bradley Manning, who in this Airman’s chain of command signed off on this young man being granted a high-level security clearance, and having access to information he had no “need to know”?
Certainly, a background investigation was completed. Was there any information revealed that could have adversely impacted the adjudication decision on whether to grant a security clearance or not? What can be done to protect our nation’s secrets while still maintaining the freedoms we cherish? Answers need to be found to prevent this from ever happening again. America’s national security depends upon it.
And contrary to what Joe Biden says, this really is a big deal.