How secret US documents ended up in the hands of a schoolgirl

One winter day in 1984, a briefcase full of documents government secrets it turned up at a school in Pittsburgh, in the hands of someone who certainly shouldn’t have them.

That someone was Kristin Preble, 13 years old. She brought the papers to school as part of a “show and tell” assignment for her eighth grade class. Her father had found them in her Cleveland hotel room several years earlier and brought them home as keepsakes.

As a different kind of spectacle unfolds in Washington about the mishandling of state secrets by presidents’ administrations donald trump and Joe Biden, that schoolgirl incident from four decades ago serves as a reminder that other governments have also let confidential information leak.

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Both the eighth grade scandal and another so-called “debate” involved the mishandling of classified documents that the Democratic president Jimmy Carter used to set up a debate with his then Republican rival ronald reagan in Cleveland on October 28, 1980. In the second case, the Reagan campaign obtained, some said stole, the briefing materials prepared by the Carter team for the debate.

In today’s docudramas, special prosecutors have been appointed to investigate secret documents found at a Trump estate after his presidency, which he initially resisted handing over, as well as Biden’s pre-presidency documents, which he he himself provided when they were discovered, but which he did not reveal publicly for months.

Now that classified material was also found in the former vice president’s house Mike Pencethere is a palpable feeling in the halls of power that as more current or former officials go through their cabinets or closets, more such moments will emerge.

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The files of the Carter administration fell into the hands of Kristin through a somewhat winding route.

Two days after the 1980 debate, the businessman Alan Preble found the papers in his Cleveland hotel room, apparently forgotten by the press secretary of Carter, Jody Powell. Preble took them to his home in Franklin Park, where they stayed for more than three years as a barely appreciated souvenir.

“We had reviewed them, but we didn’t think they were important,” Carol Preble, Kristin’s mother, recalled then, apparently unimpressed by the confidentiality seals.

But for social studies class, Kristin “He thought they would be very interesting. I thought they would be great too.”he added.

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So on January 19, 1984, the girl brought the zippered briefcase to school. ingomar.

to his teacher, Jim DeLisioHis eyes widened when he saw the warnings on the documents inside. Among them: “Classified, Confidential, Executive” Y “Property of the United States Government”.

“I didn’t really want to look at them”he recounted then. “I was too…scared. I didn’t want to know”.

However, his curiosity got the best of him. That night, he added, he, his wife, and his daughter pored over the documents, which contained “everything you would want to know from A to Z” about events in the world and in the United States. One folder was marked with the word “Iran” and other documents showed information about Libya.

After she was unable to reach Kristin’s family by phone, DeLisio He called the FBI the next day, who quickly recovered the material.

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An official of the Justice Department who spoke at that time with Associated Press On condition of anonymity, he said the packet of documents was 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick.

Despite DeLisio delivering the secret documents to the appropriate location, school authorities reprimanded the teacher for calling authorities before contacting or contacting the Preble family.

In the end, the discovery ended a broader investigation of the official Carter documents obtained by the winning Reagan campaign, by a Democratic-led congressional committee.

The Reagan administration’s Justice Department rejected the panel’s requests to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the matter. Then a lawsuit that tried to force that appointment through the courts failed, and no criminal case was filed. The debate faded, but not the concern about how those in power handle classified documents.

As for Kristin, she got an A in history and a passing grade for her school project.

Source: Associated Press