Opinion by Jesselyn Radack, Kathleen McClellan - Salon -- October 20, 2022
Donald Trump has an indisputably delusional view of what it takes to declassify national security secrets, recently claiming that he, as president, could have declassified documents just "by thinking about it." As much as Trump's latest self-serving crazy makes for good late-night comedy fodder, it also reminds us how much absurdity the U.S. government has created in national security litigation. As attorneys for whistleblowers and media sources, our cases have been the breeding ground for abuse of the broken classification system.Beneath the public laugh-fest over Trump's outlandish claims of telepathic declassification powers lies the implication that somewhere, somehow, there is a clear, fair process for doing so.