Classified Information Blog Post

This video I made during the Documents case against trump.  But I left out some stuff because I didn't think it was okay to talk about.  

But given the recent news about mishandling of sensitive information I feel it is okay for me to share the story in written form. 

This story is about my Chipotle experience, basically small talk between us employees at chipotle, and the airmen and women from Travis Air Force Base led to, too many yellow light conversations. 

Classified information is kind of like a stop light at a traffic intersection,  Green is okay and you are good to go and talk about things, Yellow lights is caution and you should slow down and think about how to proceed, and red light is a don't talk about this kind of situation. 

So let's just put ourselves in the position of a high ranking officer at Travis AFB during this time.  They have their bosses in the DOD to report to, there are countless daily life things on a military base that need to be handled logistically, everything from keeping the lights on, keeping the commissary stocked, doing background checks on the civilian workforce on base, making sure flights land and take off the way they should, training new enlisted personal, recruiting, etc etc etc.  

What air men and women talk about to the Chipotle workers, is not at all a problem on your desk to deal with. 

Except, there's the espionage act, and laws and military regulations that need to be followed. 

So as more air men and women kept coming in to get burritos the word spread around the base to go to Chipotle, back in 2007(ish) Chipotle was not really Chipotle yet.  It still relied on word of mouth. Which lead to more higher ranking officers coming into to get burritos and stuff. 

So the lower ranking people getting burritos while also maybe having too much of a loose lip about their work to a friendly face, is more or less harmless if it happens on occasion. 

But the espionage act and military regulations also prohibit military personal to talk to foreign nationals about their work.  And since it most of the people I worked with at Chipotle were Mexican nationals, it sort made it a little more serious, especially since it was also war time. 

Now the odds of that some Mexican national working at Chipotle in Fairfield CA, has some kind of back channel connection to enemies in the Middle East, is 0.  But I also worked with an Iranian woman who escaped Iran, and an Italian man from Rome.  

All of that made every conversation we had with the people who work at Travis a Yellow Light conversation to the military commanders on base. 

But it's the principle of the letter of the law and regulations that is important to follow, even if it's highly unlikely something bad would happen as a result of a conversation. 

But did I here about something that was about to happen in the Middle East before it happened, and before I saw it on the news, because a pilot was ordering a burrito and was in a good mood about something.... yea, that happened a couple times, there's was a time difference and delay I the news reports about events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Any way, rumor has it, that all these "yellow light" conversations ended up getting to one of the head officers on the base, I'm not sure if it was the base commander, but it was someone very high up the ranks on base.  

And then suddenly the only thing people who worked at Travis AFB would say was ordering food.  

There job and small talk, instantly became red light conversations.

This is similar to the current situation with the Houti attacks and group chat on signal.

There isn't anything inherently wrong or classified to be on signal or on a group chat, if these people were on a group chat on signal discussing fantasy baseball, March Madness, or gossip, that's completely acceptable and normal.

I think the conversation on the group chat probably began innocent enough with plenty of green light conversations, not disclosing anything that wasn't already public.

then it turned into a yellow light situation, about something serious about to happen,

then it probably also included some Red Light things, about the targets, locations, timings, routes... who knows.

That kind of planning, or operational plans, may not even be classified information, that's not the point.

For something to be classified or not it has to go through a process, and it's just impractical to have everything the military does be some kind of classified document stored for 30 years before the information is released.

But the sensitive information that could potentially be harmful to troops on the ground, at sea, or in the air, should be treated with the absolute highest levels of care and caution.  

In some regards, my in person communication in an era before smart phones,  that included yellow light information, was more secure and more "classified" then openly discussing similar things on cell phones using an app. 

I don't know what the hell these people were thinking by doing this on a messaging app.

From all the conversations I've had about this Chipotle experience over the years, the #1 thing that is absolutely the most important and the most serious is the information just before a military action taking place. 

Knowing where a strike, or attack is going to be before hand is not necessarily classified information, but it is serious and should be taken handled like a priest hearing a confession in church, meaning... it's between you and god's ears, and not anyone else. 

After the action has taken place, then the knowledge about it occurring before it occurred is more or less pointless.  

I mean the mechanics, designs, and inner workings of a plane, and the weapon systems are all classified or sensitive information to some degree or another, so nobody should be talking about that kind of stuff anyway.  

Unless you're the secretary of defense and are discussing these matters with Senators of the Armed Forces Committee, or other generals, or the President. 

Somehow, it looks as if Pete Hegseth forgot that compartmentalization of information is a thing the military does for good reason. 

Here is sorta how the Department of Defense and Intelligence services sometimes do a hypothetical classified mission of transporting something from Point A, to Point B. 

A truck of some kind pulls up to a place, and something is loaded into the back of the semi.  The truck driver doesn't leave his car, he just signs for it, and is told to go to a military base, like Travis or Dover or wherever. 

Upon arrival, they are told to pull onto the tarmac, and are escorted to some kind of room with snacks and drink or something.  Ground crew then unload the truck, and load it onto the cargo plane.  

Pilots now become like the truck driver, because the pilots are already in the cockpit, is told to fly the plane to a destination and not to leave the cockpit.  So they leave, then land, then what it was is unloaded and the pilot gets to exit the plane for some drinks and snacks. 

At each one of those points, a notification of some kind is given to someone in the intelligence service about the progress, and whatever it was that was delivered is of vital importance to some mission that's being carried out, which is known to only a few number of people. 

The point being is that there are flights and things the military does that are like this hypothetical, that nobody knows about. 

Because we are not supposed to know about these things.