A jumble of secret papers: why does it endanger the history of the United States of America?

At first it was for Donald Trump and then Joe Biden. The classified documents have become the center of politics in the United States in recent weeks and have raised an issue beyond partisan infighting: National heritage?

The country, which has a history of only two and a half centuries, has had a law on presidential documents since 1978, which determines who is the owner of any public or private document (with a few minor exceptions) of the president or vice president. : people are americans, with National Archives as guardians.

What documentation marked as secretwhat category they belong to (confidential, secret, or top secret) and how they are handled depends on presidential decrees.

The latest still in force is Resolution 13526, signed by Barack Obama in 2009, which they would violate, albeit in different ways, both Biden How Trump in addition to the former vice president of the latter, Mike Pence.

The scandal began with Trump — who refused to return dozens of classified documents until last August the FBI had to step in and search his home — and continued when it was revealed in January that the documents had been found in the home Bidensince he was vice president Obama.

Bidenlike penny -in whose house documents were also found in recent days-, was the one who alerted the finds and cooperated from the beginning to clarify what happened.

But the nonsense was such that the National Archives had to send a letter to the representatives presidents And vice presidents of the last six administrations – up to Reagan- ask them to check among their belongings for any other confidential documents.

AMERICAN PRIDE IN DANGER

In addition to guerrilla fighting, this case revealed various mistakes that can be made against one of the national prides, History of the United States of America.

And that each document, no matter how small, can be an invaluable testimony. This is constantly remembered in the museum. National Archiveslocated in the US capital.

Built in the 1930s, this imposing Greek-style building with Corinthian columns retains the originals. Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As well as copies and originals of hundreds of documents. From a letter about the release of a family of slaves from the county Colombia an 1862 letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) to the Kenesaw Mountain baseball selector in 1942 asking that the sport’s league continue despite the war in order to keep morale high.

In another room of the museum, it can be seen that the Archives were important even for proving the guilt of war criminals, as was the case in historical cases such as the Nuremberg Trials, or for uncovering scandals such as the Watergate.

“He Government the federal government initiated investigations – thanks to documents – on disasters, killingscivil unrest, unexplained phenomena, and confusing social accusations,” reads one of the museum’s posters.

The cultural center is the visible face of the work Filesbut most of the documents, almost all of which are already in digital format, are not stored there, but in dozens of warehouses that National Archives is available throughout the country.

Here’s how James R. Baron, who spent thirteen years at the National Archives as Director of Litigation, explains EFE.

In his opinion, the National Archives staff are “real heroes,” as they demonstrated in the Trump case, because they were not afraid to “conflict” with the former president, despite “his refusal to turn over presidential documents,” he said. EFE.

This expert, now a professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, always leaving aside the Trump case, whose intent is quite clear, believes that the rest of the cases may be errors resulting from the “classification of excessive government.” documents” and haste.

“Mistakes happen. Employees may put them in the wrong folder, which is then filled with labels marked “staff”. Remember that senior officials and their staff are very busy until the last day of the administration, and inevitably there is a rush at the end to pack up and walk out the door,” adds Baron.

In fact, his own Biden accused a few days ago of the staff who were in charge of collecting their offices.

The idea that what happened to Biden and Pence is an unwitting mistake is shared by Matthew Jay Connellyprofessor of international and global history at Columbia University who has spent three decades researching the subject of classified documents.

While the rules for how and where secret files can be accessed are clear, “the reality is that the reality is often very different,” he explained to EFE a few days before the publication of his book.Declassification mechanism(“Declassification Engine”).

“The root cause of all this is that so many documents are classified (…) It is quite possible that when we finally know what these documents (Biden or Pence) are about, we will find that it really is a lot of nothing,” – he emphasizes. Connelly.

Thus, you will not be surprised “if other similar examples are found”. “When you talk to people who work at the National Archives, they can tell you so many stories… Stories of officials who somehow ended up with papers and how they managed to get custody back.”

EFE