I spent 25 years in the State Department, most of it at numerous U.S. Embassies overseas.  I handled classified documents every day, up to and including Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).

Over those 25 years, I never received a single notice of violation for mishandling a classified document.

Not one.

Overseas, you could get a violation for leaving a classified document on your desk while walking away to go to the bathroom.  One of the jobs of the Marine Security Guards at the Embassy was to send roving patrols around the building, looking for such lapses.

There were Diplomatic Security Officers at the State Department’s U.S. offices with the same job.

I was eventually promoted all the way to the Senior Foreign Service.  One reason I made it- if you had repeated security violations, you didn’t get promoted. 

I had no violations.

We’re all human, and we all make mistakes.  I learned a long time ago not to trust memory, as in “I’m sure I locked that document in the safe.”

There’s only one way to avoid mistakes.  Make them impossible to commit.

How?  Simple.

Never print classified documents.  I read them on a monitor.

Everyone working at an agency producing and receiving classified documents is able to view them on a dedicated system connected to a monitor.  At one point those monitors connected to client systems that had USB ports, that could be used to insert a thumb drive. 

That’s how the distribution of 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables and 482,832 Army reports stored in a DOD system was possible through WikiLeaks in 2010.

That massive failure to safeguard classified information included one cable classified Secret that identified me by my full name.

Even before that breach, the State Department had installed client systems without USB ports.  You could still print classified documents by sending a command to a classified system printer.  But you couldn’t download them onto a thumb drive.

I retired in 2010.  I certainly hope that by now every agency has made the same switch.

So, if you can view any classified document on a monitor, why are they still being printed?

Convenience.  And for the same reason some people prefer reading a printed book to Kindle.  Some people like to have paper in their hands, rather than stare at a screen.

I’m one of those people.

But as the endless news coverage of classified documents showing up in homes and garages illustrates, convenience and personal preference is no longer reason enough.

The solution: Don’t allow printing of classified documents. 

That is the one and only way they will not be found outside an authorized location.

But is that practical?  Can we really expect a monitor on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office?

Why not?  It is the 21st century, right?

In any case, the President has other offices in the White House.

Monitors are available with large screens and resolutions that are actually easier to read than a printed page.  They could be made available to all top officials at a price far less than the cost of the two Special Counsels now investigating classified documents mishandling.

But wait.  Aren’t there classified documents that are never loaded onto a computer system of any kind?  That you can’t view on a monitor?

Yes.  But those are a tiny fraction of one percent of all classified documents.  They are kept locked in secure locations, and their removal and return from those locations is logged. 

If any of those documents turn up in a home or garage, then we have a problem my solution won’t fix.

But, I would much rather fix 99.9% of the problem than let the status quo stay unchanged.