22 votes

What prevents former US presidents from disclosing national secrets?

Posted by cmccabe
Tags: classified information, usa, politics, presidents

I have tried to answer this myself and come up empty handed. When a U.S. president leaves office, they take intimate awareness of many national secrets with them (weapons systems, intelligence gathering techniques, etc.). What prevents a former president from selling this information to the highest bidder?

6 comments

  1. [5]
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    1. [3]
      cmccabe
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      Thanks, great answer. There has of course been a huge amount of coverage of the risks of an untrustworthy president (not to name anyone specifically...) while they are in office, but I have not...

      Thanks, great answer. There has of course been a huge amount of coverage of the risks of an untrustworthy president (not to name anyone specifically...) while they are in office, but I have not seen a single news article about the risks that continue post-presidency. And unfortunately, your description pretty much lines up with my expectations. Still I wonder how the next administration would act, knowing that the previous president may pose a risk to highly classified information.

      Former presidents receive benefits stipulated in law. That includes a Secret Service detail that partly protects the former president against pressure or surveillance to reveal classified information. Does that SS detail also keep tabs on the former president?

      And does the intelligence community mark some information as "likely compromised" simply by the gut feeling of whether a former president is likely to disclose information to hostile foreign governments?

      8 votes
      1. [3]
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        1. [2]
          Omnicrola
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          I ask this more to understand what boundaries you have and less to use the opportunity to barrage you with questions (though I am very curious). You seem to allude that you are in a job that deals...

          I ask this more to understand what boundaries you have and less to use the opportunity to barrage you with questions (though I am very curious).

          You seem to allude that you are in a job that deals with security clearances and privileged information?

          4 votes
          1. [2]
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            1. Omnicrola
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              Thanks for sharing what you can, stay safe over there.

              Thanks for sharing what you can, stay safe over there.

              6 votes
    2. wycy
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      This is a talking point on which I don't think there's been a sufficiently cogent focus. People have mentioned his debts and that it's a concern, but no one's really threaded the needle on why...

      The President gets to skip this process. It's a huge reason why electing, say, an individual with strong ties to a historically-hostile foreign power, an affinity for dictators, and hundreds of millions in unsecured debt, is a bad idea.

      This is a talking point on which I don't think there's been a sufficiently cogent focus. People have mentioned his debts and that it's a concern, but no one's really threaded the needle on why it's a concern. I think it'd be valuable to sum it all up by saying his debts make him ineligible for even the lowest levels of security clearance (public trust or confidential), let alone to be President.

      7 votes
  2. Omnicrola
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    I have not researched this specifically, but my current understanding is that all the same laws and regulations that apply to any government employee apply to the president once they are no longer...

    I have not researched this specifically, but my current understanding is that all the same laws and regulations that apply to any government employee apply to the president once they are no longer serving in office. So if a former US president where to disclose classified information or other state secrets, they would be federally prosecuted and possibly jailed.

    The nuance is, those same laws still technically apply to a president while in office, with a few key modifiers. One, the president has the authority to do a lot of things nobody else can do unilaterally, like declassify things. So they can choose to announce on TV that Area 51 has aliens, and even though they've shared classified information, they can also declare it declassified.

    Second, there are things like the infamous Department of Justice memo that describes that while indicting a sitting president is technically possible, it is probably a bad idea given the likelihood that it would dramatically destabilize the government by decreasing the ability of the executive branch to function. I'm sure there are other practical and logistical hangups like this that I'm not aware of.

    Parallel to that, the Senate can impeach the president for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". That's a fairly vague description of possible crimes, which basically boils down to "if the Senate decides it's a crime, it's a crime".

    9 votes