Episode 23 - Classified Podcast!

In this episode your Field Commander Global Bob (Brian Varner) explains what the difference between the various classifications of data.  He gives a real world example of a situation to illustrate what type of information could be classified for a farming operation.  All of the information is unclassified and can be found on various accredited sources.

Transcripts are automatically generated.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
All right. All right, here we go. It is that time of
the week for the global BobShow. Globalbob show,
we are the crossroads oftechnology and politics. Listen
to that rock and roll music. Andthat gets me all good and jazz
stuff gets me in the zone whereI'm ready to

(00:23):
record the show. Now, if youpaid attention to the title,
you'll see thatthis show is G 14 classified.
It's not classified that fair, Ineed to put a disclaimer out. If
you say someone's classified andhave authority to generate
classified material, you need tobe careful when you throw that

(00:47):
word around. Because you couldsay something's classified, and
it would be classified if youare someone with a clearance. So
that's what we're going to talkabout today, we're going to talk
about classification. And what'sgot me wanting to talk about
classification is all the stuffgoing on in the news. Lots of

(01:10):
stuff going on. And so I getthis phone call from time to
time. And this happened when thedirtbag Edward Snowden released
a bunch of classifiedinformation people call Hey,
what, what is all this stuff andwhat's classified what's not

(01:30):
classified? And I tell them,Well, if it's classified, I
can't tell you that it'sclassified. So we're gonna break
all that down. So awesome thateverybody that continues to tune
into the show each and everyweek. And I like to really thank
those that promote the show, Ido get a couple of folks that

(01:51):
tell me that they've had somefolks tune in to the show. And I
look at the stats, and theycontinue to go up. So I
appreciate that. You can alwaysget a hold of me on Twitter. You
can send me a DM, which is adirect message. I do get DMS on
Twitter, because it's you know,it's open. You don't have to be

(02:13):
friends with each other andstuff like that. Of course, we
do have the public page there onFacebook Globalbob show, you can
go out to the show websiteGlobalbob show.com. And get a
hold of me. So let's, let'sbreak this down. So why am I

(02:34):
wanting to talk about classifiedinformation? Well, it's no
secret that filled CommanderGlobalbob, before he settled
into his permanent house, herein beautiful central Florida, I
actually worked for thegovernment, most of you guys

(02:57):
know that. Gals know that.
Plenty of coverage in the news.
Remember, one of the one of theBloomberg articles came out,
gave an interview to Bloombergand it said something to the
effect that security companieshire ex spies. So anyways, my
name is listed in it. So mycover is blown. So as you can

(03:19):
imagine, there has been a coupleof calls here to global Bob,
regarding what happened down atMar a Lago. And I can tell you
all just like anything that I'vebeen involved with in the news,
it doesn't matter what side ofthe aisle your field commander

(03:42):
hears on. It doesn't matter ifI'm Democrat, Republican,
Independent, I just say how itis. And trust me when we talk
about the election hacking, I'lltell some stories where people
wanted me to basically fit intotheir narrative, and I would not
do it. So this has nothing to dowith the ex president, Donald

(04:05):
Trump. Whether I support him ornot, I'm just here to talk
about, you know, classifiedinformation and what could have
led them to go in and give thema reason to go in to try to
retrieve this information. Soyou know, throughout the years

(04:26):
here before, you would talkabout folks that leaked
classified information, and itwas a very big deal, but I just
feel bad, especially being inthat realm where you have
dirtbags like Edward Snowden andI say he's a dirtbag because he
is. He released a lot ofclassified information of which

(04:47):
the classified information hewas not a producer of and
whether your hell him as a hero,because he shed some light on
something If that supposedly ourgovernment was doing to me, I
don't think so because haven'tlived in that world. Very
simply, it takes people toproduce that classified

(05:11):
information. And if you reallysources and methods at a bare
minimum, your cost in ourcountry millions and probably
billions of dollars of what ittook to produce that
information. So yeah, he's adirtbag Bradley Manning. He's a
dirtbag. And I guess now hisname is Chelsea Manning. So

(05:31):
she's a dirtbag. And whetheryour same thing you know, held
him as a hero or not, it doesn'tmatter to me, my opinion is, is
that that's not theirinformation to disclose. And
there are proper channels ofwhich they could go through that
process if they thoughtsomething was wrong with what

(05:52):
was going on. And apparently,they may or may not have
followed that. But regardless,you don't go directly to the
public and become awhistleblower, you put lives in
danger. And to me, the juicejust is not worth the squeeze.
And of course, there's beenother dirtbags throughout the

(06:13):
ages. Aldrich Ames comes tomind. And you know, a couple
other ones. But anyways, so whenwe talk about classified
information, there's basicallyyou know, four categories of
classified information. And eachone is kind of like, more

(06:35):
sensitive, more sensitive, moresensitive as you get all the way
up to the top. And at the bottomlayer here is not really a
classification, classification,but it could be called a
classification. But I guess forour audience will say it is and
that's on classifiedinformation. Now, of course, in

(06:57):
the term, it says unclassified,so it is unclassified. But a lot
of it has a little tick markthere that says, for official
use only. That means it isunclassified. But it's only
supposed to be used for officialuse. And some of those uses

(07:18):
could be, you know, working withvarious software vendors, and
you're talking about IPaddresses and stuff like that.
Or you're talking about a personthat worked for us certain
agency, that's unclassified, butreally shouldn't be spilling

(07:38):
that information, unless it'sfor official use. So that's the
lowest level, and then there isconfidential. And we'll go
through what all the terms ofthese are, but the next one is
confidential. And then afterthat, you have secret
information. And so as you climbup to the ranks, at the very,

(08:02):
very tip top is called Topsecret. And so with these
different rankings, you can haveone document, and you'll have
different paragraph markings inthere. And so if you see the old
spy movies, they get out thefolder, and it's got top secret,

(08:23):
you know, stamp across it withthat crazy font. I don't know
how to describe it. But we allhave seen that font. And it says
top secret? Well, when you seethat, that means that inside
that folder, that's the highestclassification. And inside of a
document, that's the highestclassification. But inside that

(08:43):
document, you can have differentmarkings where some of it is top
secret. Some of it isconfidential, some of it is
secret, some of it isunclassified. And so the
documents that are put togetherlike that, they're supposed to
be put together with the minimumclassification to protect the

(09:04):
information that's in there. Sowhat I want you guys to
understand and gals tounderstand is that when they say
that documents, Top Secret,well, yeah, that document is but
there's portions of it in therethat could actually be
unclassified. Now, when you golooking through the definition,
I'm going to skip theunclassified part, but an
example of confidential datawould be something like military

(09:28):
strength and weapons, right? Andthat means that if that
information got out, it wouldn'tbe good, but it's not you know,
super damaging. It's basicallycould give the enemy an edge.
But then when you see stuffinside the document that's
marked secret, and this is wherea lot of the documents are. We

(09:50):
got some stats here a little bitlater in the podcast, but most
of the information isn't, youknow, that top secret level A
lot of it's at the secret level.
And by the way, if any of my FBIfriends are listening, or my
fellow ex intelligence officersare listening, all of this

(10:11):
information that I'm giving youcan be found at various public
sites, not these sites like wikileak and
stuff like that. So, you know, Ijoke around saying that we're
going to talk about theclassified episode here of the
Globalbob show, but nothing thatI'm revealing is classified in
nature. So I just want to putthat disclaimer in there, I

(10:33):
don't need the ranch here ratedat four o'clock in the morning,
I prefer that if there is a raidthat they would do it, you know,
after I've had my, my morningjuice. So anyways, so at the
secret level, if thatinformation was to get out, it
basically would cause seriousdamage to national security. And

(10:56):
this is the, like I said, thelevel of classification that a
lot of classified documents areclassified at. So a lot of your
military folks and these typepeople, I don't know of anybody
that has just a confidentialclearance, I'm pretty sure the
lowest one I've heard of asecret. So you can see even with
the Secret clearance there thatit could cause serious damage to

(11:19):
our national security. So hushhush not for tell at the secret
level. Now, when you get intothe top secret, this information
could be expected to cause gravedamage to national security. So
that's a that's a real, real bigdeal. And a lot of these leaks
that they do, if you look atespecially Snowden, since he did

(11:43):
work for the National SecurityAgency, as a contractor, he
would have had probably accessto top secret information,
probably at the least, justgiven the level of the
classified material that hesupposedly leaked, he would
have, you know, had access tothat. And so at that top secret

(12:04):
level, you start getting intoother areas of further
restricting the data. So whenyou think about classified
documents, it's all aboutrestricting who has access to
it, and how that data ishandled, how that data is
stored, which is going to bereally important when we talk
about Mar Lago and each time yougo up the, the birthday cake, as

(12:31):
you call it, a pyramid, morelike a pyramid, you know, at the
top, there's not a lot ofmaterial up there, you got a big
base and not a lot of material.
And so you have these thingscalled Special Access Programs.
And it doesn't mean that there'sother levels of clearances
higher, it's kind of likeparallel, when you think of it
that way. So think of topsecrets, the top and then you

(12:54):
start getting all thesedifferent designations that even
further restrict access to thedata to a small group. Sometimes
the people that have access tothis special access program or
SAP data, or the Sei, which isyour Sensitive Compartmented
Information, these people mayhave to go under even more

(13:18):
scrutiny themselves. Now, wehaven't really talked about how
people access classifiedinformation. We just talked
about how we handle classifiedinformation. And then these
Special Access Programs. Some ofit, you have to have what they
call a lifestyle polygraph to beable to access some of this

(13:39):
data. And that lifestylepolygraph is where they
basically put the person that isrequesting access to that
information on a polygraphmachine. And they ask all kinds
of questions because they wantto make sure that there's not
something in your past that youcould be exploited against to

(14:00):
get this information divulged.
And so I'm cannot go into thedetails of how all this works.
But basically, they're lookingfor things that that an
intelligence officer of anothercountry could use to exploit

(14:21):
you. You also go through whatthey call a CI polygraph, which
is a counterintelligencepolygraph. And that's where
they're looking into your pastand looking at you as a person
and seeing what your level ofloyalty is. And if there's
anything that would make youpick another country besides the

(14:45):
United States, and that's all Iwant to say about that, but
they're basically trying to say,how trustworthy are you when you
leave outside those walls?
Where this information is, wouldyou divulge it? And so These
Special Access Programs, this isthe highest part. And there's
other ones that are higher thatyou know, some people don't even

(15:09):
know about. So to pull it alltogether, you have these
different levels ofclassification about handling
data, you also have to gothrough different scrutiny to
see if you are mentally able to,to be given this information and
to make sure that you can't beexploited to get this
information out. So it is areally big deal. Now, all of

(15:35):
this classification stuff thatwe speak of, has not been around
for really to me that long. Imean, my dad was born in 1952.
And the modern US classificationsystem was created in September
of 1951. So less than a yearbefore my dad was born, they

(15:59):
said, Hey, we need to, we needto put some rules around this.
Because before Harry Trumanactually signed this as an
executive order that establishedTop Secret, secret and
confidential, there was a lot ofpeople just kind of doing their

(16:21):
own thing, right? Like, hey,this is like some important
stuff. So let's don't, let'sdon't leave it out. And when,
when they formed the commission,they noticed i Wow, there's a
lot of sensitive data, we reallydon't have exactly a means to
classify it and basically have ameasuring stick that what other

(16:45):
documents could be classified asso anyways, they went around,
and they saw that people wereleaving classified data all over
the place that wasn't locked up,even some people were taking it
home, so they could work ontheir stuff at home. And there
was not even a way to evenpunish people for for security,

(17:09):
neglect. So Harry Truman 1951,decided that, we need to put
some stuff around this. Now,when you think about classified
information, there's one personthat sits at the very tip top of

(17:30):
the heap. Now, if you have aclearance, and you are writing
documents, and you're producingnow, whether that's code or
you're producing, you know,Intel reports, and stuff, then
you are generating classifiedinformation. And there's a
classification book almost forevery possible job role. And you

(17:55):
look it up to say, Okay, well,this particular information, if
it's combined with these otherpieces of information, that
makes it classified at thislevel. Now, I'm not going to go
into the details. Because it's,you know, it's just not
something that I feel thateverybody needs to know, but
just know that if you're afarmer, and you use Monsanto

(18:24):
seeds, and you plant those seedsin February, and then you use
this other special fertilizerthree days later, exactly three
days later, right? So I'm gonnashow you how this could be
classified. Now, the fact thatyou use Monsanto seeds would be
considered, let's sayunclassified. And the fact that

(18:45):
you use this othercompany's fertilizer that's
unclassified. The fact that youordered your seeds or fertilized
your seeds three days later,that's unclassified. Right? So
each individual piece isunclassified. And when you think
of information out in the world,pretty much everything is kind

(19:08):
of unclassified and still, untilyou start aggregating the data
and putting it together. And soif and so back to my farmer
analogy, Monsanto seeds thatgive you a really, really high
yield on your crop if you usethis other companies fertilizer,

(19:30):
well, those two pieces together.
Let's say that that'sconfidential, right? We don't
want anybody to know that that'spart of the secret sauce. But
really, where things startgetting real interesting is, is
that Monsanto's says you canonly use their fertilizer and

(19:52):
you find out that if you putthis other people's fertilizer
on those seeds, if you do tooearly, it will burn them, and
they will not produce anything.
If you do it too late, it won'thelp you out and say the worms
eat your seeds or whatever goeson. And so the secret is, is

(20:12):
that exactly three days afteryou get those seeds, and you get
them in the ground, you get thefertilizer on there. And it you
know exactly at this time, let'ssay that that's secret
information, right? Because ifsomeone found out your
competitor there, the farmerdown the road, if he was to find

(20:34):
out about this, then he couldmaybe get his crops to, to
market early or something likethat. Now, here's the top secret
information. This is what youcannot have anybody know. And if
they were to find out yourcompetitor, you'd basically be
out of business and and stuffis, is that when you put that

(20:57):
fertilizer on, you got to comeback when the temperature is
exactly, say 73 degrees, and youhave to come back usually at
nighttime when the dew is comingin. And you have to blow like a
propeller on there to blow thatdo away. Because just that

(21:19):
little amount of dew will beenough to make these seeds grow
20 times faster, and all thisgood stuff. So think about that
as the top secret layer. And thereason why I give you something
funny about a farmer is isbecause people think that you
know, the top secret level, thatmeans Hey, I get to know where

(21:40):
the space aliens are. It's notlike that. And also, what I want
you to understand is that insidethese documents, there could be
everything from unclassified allthe way up to these special
access program classifications.
And so it's not like well,confidential just means not as

(22:02):
important. Well, you put a bunchof confidential information
together, and you can getsomething that's top secret. Or
you can put a bunch ofunclassified information
together, and a bunch ofunclassified information. And it
can be top secret, maybe certainpeople meet at certain times.
And, you know, there's tons ofhistory books written on this.
But you know, the story aboutduring the Cuban Missile Crisis,

(22:26):
where there was a bartender,Saul to people talk, and that
was part of the cabinet or thewar or something like that. And
they said that they knew thatthe Cuban missile crisis would
be de escalated, because thesetwo people would not be out
drinking together. And so thatwould be top secret. Another
piece of top secret stuff thatis unclassified is is that and

(22:49):
this is all out on the news,too. So I mean, I'm not giving
away anything. But you know,when we were going to invade
Iraq, that was top secret andsecret and different levels and
stuff like that troop movements.
But there has been a lot ofreports that they knew that when
we were going to invade Iraq,because at the Pentagon, there
was a crazy amount of lights onin the building. And there were

(23:14):
a lot check this out.
Unclassified, there were a lotof pizzas being delivered. And
so they knew the Pentagon washopping that night, and people
started speculating, hey, we'refixing to go in to Iraq and
invade them. So you know, but ifsomeone was to come out of the
Pentagon and say, Hey, tomorrownight,

(23:34):
we're going to invade Iraq.
Well, that would be you know,highly top secret information.
If someone said, Hey, by theway, we're going to take the
deal with the Cuban MissileCrisis, that would be top
secret, but you know, thisunclassified stuff when it's
fused together. That's howthings become top secret. So
now, let's talk about the topicat hand. Like I said, does not

(23:56):
matter what side of the aisleyou're on? Here is what is being
accused that the formerPresident Donald Trump had
information at Mar a Lago thatwas classified. Now, mind you, I
didn't say it was top secret. Ididn't say it was confidential,

(24:17):
right. I mean, now we're seeingthat some of the information
coming out that supposedly itwas top secret. And like I
mentioned, top secretinformation means that there
would be grave harm, or peopleput in grave danger if that
information was to be leakedout. And so they went in with a

(24:39):
search warrant. And now mindyou, I don't want to get into
all the the legality of thesearch warrant. Was it too
general? Was it this was it thatI mean, the ultimate thing is,
is that it's a yes or noquestion was their top secret
information there? That wasbeing In stored, and then not

(24:59):
proper manner, which could be asafe or some kind of armed
guard, some of this informationis stored around. And so that's
what they went in there to do.
They are in search or war insearch of information that was

(25:22):
classified. Now, I don't want toget into all the legalities of
the search warrant. Was it toobroad? Were they on a witch
hunt? To just, you know, usethat as an excuse. We'll just
have to see, and we'll let thecourts decide. But the other
thing that has happened that I'mgetting some phone calls from,

(25:44):
they say, See, they're tryingthey being the FBI, they're
trying to hide something,because they released this
affidavit, search warrant,whatever. And there's a lot of
it that's redacted. There's alot of black lines on there, and
what are they trying to hide?
Well, I can tell you whatthey're trying to hide. They are
trying to hide classifiedinformation from being released

(26:08):
to the public. Now. This is agame that any of them can play.
You know, I don't I don't knowif they're playing the game or
not. But when they redactthings, then it comes up for
interpretation like well, do wereally need to redact that? Did
they over redact, but like Imentioned earlier is, is that,

(26:29):
you know, the various positionsI've been in, there's
classification guides, and itsays this information is
classified at this level. So,you know, the DOJ, they have
their own classification guides.
And I can tell you one thingthat is almost always certainly

(26:49):
classified, is sources, whetherthey are human sources of what
we call a human, or if they aretechnical sources. Those are
almost always classified. Andthis is the same thing in a
different world where theredon't release names of

(27:11):
confidential informants. Right.
And so, you know, you got tothink that that's probably a lot
of the stuff that they redactedwas, who told them this
information, what led them downthis path? If they had
surveillance on the place, youknow, they're going to redact
all of that because this hasbeen released to the public. And
the public, as I mentionedearlier in the podcast, does not

(27:33):
have the proper classification.
Level, they have not beenthrough the proper scrutiny, not
even for confidentialinformation to be released to
them. So that's probably a lotof what you're seeing now
whether they over read overredacted almost said over
reacted with some people may saythey probably overreacted, but

(27:55):
over redacted the information.
Well, we just simply will notknow.
The last thing I'll mention is,is that there is this little
thing where the President is theultimate classification
authority, the Presidenthimself. So right now we have
President Joe Biden. He is inthe Oval Office, and if he wants

(28:17):
to declassify that there'sreally unicorns and these
unicorns fly around and theyexcrete golden nuggets, then he
can declassify that. And so whatI'm wondering is, is that these
boxes that they went to goretrieve, if that was the case,

(28:38):
if President Trump was stillpresident at the time, did
President Trump maybe declassifythat information himself? I
don't know what all that entailsbecause I have not been
president of the this greatnation. But, you know, so it
could still be markedclassified. And maybe he

(29:00):
declassified them. But what Iwill say is, is that for us that
we're in the business during thetime of the WikiLeaks boom, and
these other leaking sites, justbecause things are out in the
public doesn't mean that theyare unclassified. So someone
like Snowden leaking top secretinformation, I never went to the

(29:22):
sites and got plenty of peoplethat I worked with, they did
like heck, no, we're not lookingat that, because that would be
us viewing classifiedinformation in an unclassified
space or a space that's not ableto adhere to the security
standards of which thatinformation is classified at so

(29:43):
my house is not rated for topsecret Compartmented
Information, some little funfact there. So if President
Trump did in fact wave thePresidential wand and say these
are now on classified the Thenthe portion markings would have
had to been updated. And you cansee this I mean, there's plenty

(30:05):
of stuff that's declassified allthe time. And you'll see where
top secret is scratched out, andthen it's actually declassified.
And it makes its way into theNational Archives. And this is
where anybody can view it. Now,one other thing, I will say,
President Trump was a servant asour Commander in Chief and

(30:28):
President of this great nation.
And technically, that would makehim an employee. And one of the
things that is very muchinstilled in you when you're
going through the indoctrinationprocess, or they call it end
dock. Is is that this isbasically a lifetime commitment.
And just because you're nolonger employed by the

(30:51):
government, they debrief you,and they tell you, hey, you
know, there's a certain amountof years based on the different
classification of informationthat you've received, and it's
locked up in your head that youcannot talk about. And I think
it's 70 years since the time itwas classified. So that

(31:13):
basically makes it a lifetimecommitment. So just because you
don't work for the governmentanymore, doesn't mean that you
can start telling people wherethe space aliens are, because
some of this stuff takes yearsand years and years and even
decades to formulate. Sosomething that you worked on 10
years ago, could still be aliveand active operation. And at the

(31:34):
end, the people that are outthere on the frontlines are
military soldiers orintelligence officers and those
people, they are out thererisking their life and limb, and
some of these folks areoperating in various countries
that they be killed, and theyhave been killed. Plenty of
stars on the outside of the CIA,plenty of stars at the NSA. I'm

(31:55):
sure the FBI has, you know,their, their various monuments
that people have been killed by,you know, being discovered as
being an intelligence source. Soanyways, that's what we have for
today. Appreciate everybody forriding along here in the

(32:17):
Globalbob show. And like I said,We joke around, we say this is
classified. But what I wanted todo is give you all a primer and
a little 101 lesson of why theFBI, I mean, for all intents and
purposes, they were under theimpression there's classified
information there. And so whythey went in now, whether they

(32:39):
went in the right way, the wrongway.
We don't know. You know, I don'twant to get into the politics of
this. I stay out of the politicswhenever I'm talking about a lot
of stuff that could be spunpolitically, but you know, what
does have to see. And hopefully,by the end of this podcast here,

(33:01):
you now will understand thatthere's, you know, things that
are classified, and if thatinformation was to get out, it
would cause us grave damage. Allright. Well, thank you,
everybody, for tuning in. I willsee everybody next week. Please
continue to support the show.
This is why you This is for youall and be safe out there. And

(33:21):
just know that when there'svarious operations to retrieve
this classified information,it's because they're trying to
protect the sources and methods.
All right. Until next week.