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This and many other problems, though perhaps still vulnerable to the kind of corruption we have seen rampant throughout the government and the press recently, would be vastly alleviated by giving Congress and the judiciary equal and separate power to the executive on matters of classification of information. The Congress and the courts need to have the power to evaluate the classification of information, and they need the power to declassify documents as they see fit for the proper functioning of government.
We don't really and truly have a such thing as a national election in this country, a good reason for keeping the Electoral College and just making it proportional instead of winner take all. We have 50 state elections. What that means is that any senator has an equal authority, because of an equal constituency in any election, to the President as far as the investment of public trust. The public trust is the override on "security clearances", the President-Elect is not subject to any approval for the ultimate security clearance. Senators should not be, either. The public has granted them that right, including the right to declassify information, in the voting booth. As for the courts, they routinely review classified information. They should therefore be able to declassify it if that serves justice.
And nobody should have the right to deny access to information to such people. Least of all the 'appendix' of our political system, the Vice President.
Before any charges are pressed against Thomas Tamm, every sitting and former senator who has or had access to the details of his case should be called to justify the classification of the fact that an illegal program was being executed by the person sworn to faithfully execute the laws of this country.
OT - On yesterday's thread, El Cid brought an analysis of the press by Keshev to everyone's attention. I forwarded it to the New York Times Public Editor with a note that they should use it as a yardstick to evaluate the objectivity of the Times' own reporting. They have not done that, but Ethan Bronner's article on the manipulation of the press by the Israeli government this morning does cite Keshev. Bronner has been flying small trial balloons that there is something wrong with the whole mental construct, he criticized the cognitive dissonance between a campaign that said it was targeted at a new ceasefire and rhetoric suggesting it was targeted at eliminating Hamas. I think he has a ways to go, but at least he is asking some questions.
