this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
745 points (97.6% liked)
Political Memes
5429 readers
2124 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes they can, it's actually what Trump is trying to insist he did do in the classified documents case, which he did not.
Technically I don’t think they declassify it, but they can release the contents if they so desire.
Back in the 50’s my dad had a security clearance, and at one point worked on a highly classified project that he said about 10 people, including the President, knew the full details of. A few months after my dad’s involvement with the project ended he heard the President talk about it during a state of the union address.
The next day when he got to work there was a memo waiting for him saying that under no circumstances was he to confirm, deny, or even talk about anything he may have heard the President talk about.
The project remained classified for years after that day because it involved national defense. The President spoke about it to let the USSR know what our capabilities were, but not the specifics of how we did it.
Now I want to know what project it was
It was the 1950s version of Star Wars. As my dad put it decades after the fact, it was a project to “identify, track, and destroy a hostile satellite”. It was a direct response to Sputnik.
So aliens, got it.
That will be the takeaway for everyone reading this.
This is an entirely different thing than declassification, though cool for your dad.