The Laughing Wolf

Berger, Old Media, And More

The Old Media is responding about as I thought they might, with the Shady Lady burying the story almost in the obituaries, and the L.A. Times giving them a run for the title. Despicable is the most polite I will term most of the media coverage to date. For those wanting to keep up with the latest and greatest, go check Instapundit who is running some damn good links.

Speaking as someone who has worked in and around secure facilities, documents, and such, the inadvertent defense does not hold water. You are trained, you sign documents attesting to said training, and the rules are very strict and very clear. It is not quite true that you can sneeze wrong around such and be in violation, but it is close. When you outprocess, you are briefed, debriefed, and sign yet more documents and swear and attest that you will obey the rules. The training is not quite continuous, but near enough, and I can’t believe for one minute that a National Security Advisor was unaware of the rules. Especially given what happened at the CIA on his watch. So, I don’t buy it and the spin isn’t working for me. The more they try to spin it, the more the word “criminal” comes to my mind, as well as disgust for someone who would take his sworn oath so lightly.

To try and stay on a lighter note today, I will tell a short tale of classified intrigue to you. Yep, you heard it hear first. Secure facilities are not exempt from safety regulations and from fire drills and the like. Classified info and hardware just make it a LOT more interesting, and your humble author failed to duck fast enough one day and found himself assigned as fire warden for one section of just such a facility. Time came for the regular fire drill, and I was faced with a problem. A group of people refused to leave their secure room and I did not have the right word/clearance to enter. Now, I rather suspect that they were playing rather than working, and that they thought that their level of classification of would exempt them from having to take part (so did the powers that be). Because it took better than 15 minutes to convince them I was not going to play along, the drill was a bust and had to be redone later. This was a MAJOR inconvenience for everyone else (properly securing information, equipment, and areas can be a pain) in the facility, who expressed their displeasure to the group in question in a variety of interesting ways. Their boss (and rumor had it, the commanding General of said facility) threatened to grant me a clearance higher than theirs if it was needed. I am glad that did not happen, and they – reluctantly – played a bit nicer from then on. I am also glad that I was able to shed the task to someone else later, and that the PITAs in question did get theirs in the end. And I had nothing to do with it, honest.

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