More Trouble For Hillary Clinton, Classified E-Mail Total Reaches 1,666

Thank you! That is indeed completely false. Just by becoming President, you do not get handed the "keys to the vault". They still must meet the requirement of having a "need to know" the classified information before they are presented with it. The President is a four (or if they are lucky, eight) year civilian gig, and the "lifers" in the intel and military world ain't giving them everything unless the "need to know" criteria is met. It is widely figured that the President who most likely had the most access to highly classified intel was George Bush Senior, and that was because before being Vice-President or President, he was the head of the CIA. Still though, once he was President, he was still subject to "need to know" protocols.

The President is not given the same access to T/S data that high-ranking "lifers" in the military or intel fields may have access to if they have a "need to know". In fact, what information the President is told is typically data that has been heavily filtered before it ever reaches their desk. One of the tasks of their Chief Of Staff is to vet the data that goes before the President to both not overload them as well as to allow the Commander In Chief to be able to maintain plausible deniability, giving them only the data deemed necessary to make a decision.

In many cases, the President is not nearly as well informed as many might think. That of course can become an issue when the CIA or DoD deliberately leave out certain information from their briefings, or downplay certain things while up-playing others in those briefings, done in an effort to sculpt the President's response and get him to act the way the intel community and military want them to. The President is told a lot less than many people think.

/r/politics Thread Parent Link - lawnewz.com