Well to me I sort of think that the ‘obvious’ answer is “never” however, as of now, the answer seems to be “whenever you like as long as you are the President of the USA”. Surely that can never be the right answer!
Yes, it is clear that there will be times for any of us when the law needs to be ‘bent’ because it does not cover the precise circumstances in which we find ourselves, however that bending in and of itself should be justification for examining the law itself and deciding whether the “bending” should be enshrined for future similar occasions or whether – yep – you were acting unlawfully. In NO law abiding society can I think of a situation where simply ignoring the law should be encouraged, let alone allowed to pass unquestioned.
I am reminded of something I read many years ago – and I have forgotten the details, so I must re-read it before posting more about it. The gist of it was that creating a system of laws that you KNOW people are going to break is not very helpful – but I will come back to that in a future post.
The real problem (I think) in the current case is that the law is not set up to “work properly” when it comes up against someone who can – as they say – game the system. For most people, gaming the system cannot work – the resources required are simply too much. For some, however, gaming the system simply becomes a way of life – partly because the game, in part at least, is to garner sufficient resources to continue the game.
In a recent post I talked about the concept of asymmetric warfare and the games played here are a pretty good example of that. The person who “plays by the rules” will face justice for any crime that they commit because “the system” is built to work through the processes and end up with a verdict according to the law.
In contrast those who “game the system” know the processes well enough to recognise where the weaknesses are (and, of course, lawyers are trained to do just that) and how best to exploit them when they can. Now I would suggest that any “reasonable” and independent person would immediately recognise that what was done with highly classified documents amounted to – not just a crime – but a horrendously serious threat to national security. Any ‘normal’ person doing that sort of thing would find themselves carted off to jail and incarcerated pretty much immediately.
Having worked with classified documents myself I am well aware of the handling requirements and the potential consequences if anyone mishandled them. I am also well aware that although all these rules and procedures and processes were in place it did – in large part – rely on those who handled the documents doing things ‘properly’ and following the procedures and not breaking the rules. There were very few barriers to going rogue – but it was also very likely that you would be found out.
I can, however, imagine the case of someone simply gaming that system as well. The security was good – but it was certainly not foolproof. Did anyone circumvent the rules? I don’t know of any case, although I suspect there were at least instances of mistakes being made.
It is very unlikely that anyone took home piles of secret documents as souvenirs though to show off to their friends in order to gain a bit of ‘prestige’.
There is a lot that could be delved into here regarding the necessity of people being of “good character” and acting in “good faith” – many of our societal norms require that. I will, however leave that to a future post.