Leadership, real leadership, requires setting an example. As far as security is concerned, the leader of the federal government, Joe Biden, has earned an F- for security. His setting of a double standard for the handling and storage of classified materials drives home once again (Hillary, Trump, you out there?) that there’s one set of rules for those on top and another for those underneath.
I am a retired State Department official who held a Top Secret clearance without incident for some 23 years. Not once did I break the rules by violating my promise in return for access to the classified material I was privileged to see. I never left anything out on my desk, never took home a piece of paper, never brought a classified cable on the train to read during my commute. Even when I wrote my whistleblowing book, We Mean Well, about Iraq’s reconstruction, I was meticulous in not including anything remotely classified, even insisting the publisher hire an ex-CIA lawyer to vet the manuscript.
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