These stories about classified documents are–for the most part–much ado about nothing.

I’ve read classified documents when I worked for the Voice of America–including occasional Top Secret ones. In most cases these were the candid opinions of U.S. diplomats and foreign service officers serving abroad about persons and policies of the nation where they worked.

So we are missing these basic questions. “Who decides how to classify documents? What criteria determine what should be classified and what should not?”

In my opinion and experience, most are unworthy of classification–the product of a paranoid government bureaucrat who fears more about making a mistake rather than concern for national security. The latter possibility being so remote as to warrant no classification stamp at all.

Finally, we all tend to be pack rats. Misfiling material we think that we’ll read later instead of shredding it immediately.

Those of us of an older generation recall the pneumatic tubes in department stories that sent cylinders with items from one location to another. Perhaps we should install those between government official offices and the National Archives where these documents are supposed to be stored