Richard Nixon's war on drugs. All bills larger than 100 were removed from circulation and banks were directed to return them to the treasury when they were deposited.

@glennlab Glenn...you always know stuff! Have I asked you this one?......Why is there no official tracking system for ''classified documents?" Shouldn't the group/individual who created the document be responsible to maintaining its security?

@pamagain There is, but it depends on the integrity of the authority. Everyday, Thousands of classified documents are created (copies) and accounted for. It is very complicated.
The Presidential Daily briefing for instance.
a single document classified SCI, Top Secret with portions classified Secret, Confidential and For Official Use Only. That document will be transmitted to the VP, The Sec of State, Def and other Sec either in whole or in parts. It will also be retransmitted to USAF, Army, Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, and reserve Units who will use it in their daily Intel staff briefings.

Each admin that receives a document is required to log it in, file it, insure it has been properly marked if not already marked. When the document has served its purpose it is scheduled for retirement/destruction and marked off the log. The person who is the top secret control officer only monitors the secret/confidential logs, but oversees and verifies the receipt and destruction of all TS and above.

The problem with political offices is that if politicians don't feel the laws apply to them, and their staff doesn't know the law, there is no one to keep track. There are supposed to be clerks and the like that hold over to train the incoming staff, in Trump's case, he fired all the previous staff so there was no holdover so no accountability.

This could be rectified by having an archivist assigned to the VP and Pres to secure records, they should be exempt from being able to be dismissed or excluded by the pres.

@glennlab "Complicated," indeed! And, if it's true that retention of these documents by presidents, vice-presidents, etc, has been an on-going practice....why hasn't anyone thought about this issue before????

How do you KNOW all this stuff. Glenn????

@pamagain I worked with a lot of it. One of the problems is the declassification instructions included in the messages often say a date or an event, so the document is unclassified, but still marked as classified. My office got 20-30 classified messages a day, I dread to even think how many the VP gets. I am willing to bet that in both the Pence and Biden cases the docs were declassified but not downgraded by marking. and staff just ignored them.

@glennlab So many details the average person never considers. Sheesh! The idea of classified information being in the hands of the PUSTULE is just horrifying.