If you’ve read any of my little stories, you know I spent a few years as an intelligence officer in the military. What an interesting business, especially during the Vietnam War and other later hostilities! Surely you know that I can never tell you any specific details, nothing classified. But I can tell you a few things about those days.
In the early ’70s my unit at Langley AFB in Hampton, VA, produced many intelligence materials that were used all over the world. Sooner or later most classified information will be destroyed and/or disposed of according to military regulations.
On one occasion, in Germany, I helped destroy some classified by shredding it. What a noisy job with that huge shredding machine! In this digital age, I imagine there are probably some new tricks now. Being an old retired lady, I’m out of touch.
Burning in fire is probably the oldest and often the easiest way to destroy lots of things, isn’t it? And so it was in my era, the ‘70s-80s. There are different rules for different levels of classification. Most of the material I used at that time was destroyed by either of these above processes. Like all the Secret files under these pink cover sheets!
I should mention that there were much more stringent rules for the more highly classified materials, Top Secret, etc. You surely have read about the Mar a Lago classified mess, very highly classified files.
Intel folks are made aware of protecting and destroying classified material from their first day on the job. I had heard of burn detail in previous assignments but never had to be involved. At Task Force Alpha in Thailand, I heard that they stored the bags of classified under the floors. Because TFA was a computerized operation, our building had those raised floors you’ve surely seen, a metal framework with large square tiles, strong enough to walk on and to hold a lot of furniture. But underneath were the many cables needed to connect our mainframe computer and its peripherals.
Supposedly our airmen would raise some of those tiles and stash the bags underneath until the next burn detail day. I also heard that maybe there were snakes (cobras) making their homes under that flooring, but do you think I was dumb enough to look in there?
Military bases normally had a controlled (secure) place to destroy the classified, whether burning or shredding. You didn’t just step out to the parking lot with a cigarette lighter and burn a few classified files every few days! What if a few scraps of classified blew away? Not too secure, right?
So there I was in Virginia in a unit that created a ton of classified. Lieutenants, male and female, pulled burn detail with the enlisted guys, to monitor, watch, and verify the actual destruction. My turn came. I eventually had the pleasure/honor/hassle of burn detail. The young airmen loaded all the bags into the truck, a step van. I climbed into the truck with the driver, a non-commissioned officer (NCO), and a couple of airmen. Off we drove to the burn facility.
I could not believe it. Langley was a major Air Force headquarters, the home of Tactical Air Command, fighter pilot central. And no local burn facility? We had to drive to Norfolk, at least 10 miles away and across that huge water, Hampton Roads. Have you ever seen that bridge-tunnel? Argh!
Soon we were on it! The scary-to-me thing connects Hampton/Newport News to Norfolk. I have never liked tunnels. How can you be sure one won’t collapse while you’re in it? But this bridge thing, it ran part of the way above water and then under the bay. I could visualize little trickles of water starting to seep through the joints of the tiles lining the tunnel.
“Has the truck ever broken down on one of these trips?” I asked the NCO driver.
“It has happened a couple of times.”
“Then what do you do?”
“We call back to the base and tell them to send another truck. If that happens today, you will have to sit here and help guard the classified.”
I had visions of spending hours stuck in that truck, waiting for the tunnel to collapse or at least start leaking.
Lucky me. We got through OK and reached our destination, the Norfolk City Dump — Argh! Our bags of classified materials were loaded onto a long conveyor belt running high up to the top of the building. At that point, they fell into the fire below, along with all the Norfolk city trash!
And I was to validate that our material had been destroyed? Color me unimpressed…