The Extra-Secret White House Computer System, Explained

WASHINGTON — The whistle-blower who revealed President Trump’s try to pressure Ukraine’s leader to open investigations that could gain him politically also accused White House officials of essentially hiding a hard document of the communication by using placing it in the same distinctly restricted pc gadget for closely guarded government secrets and techniques.

In his complaint, the whistle-blower noted White House officials who portrayed the storage of the call report in that device as “solely for the reason of protective politically touchy — as opposed to countrywide protection-sensitive — facts” and labeled it an “abuse.” Here is how the restrained garage system works, in step with interviews with more than a half-dozen former National Security Council personnel members who spoke anonymously.

How do aides normally shop records of presidential calls with foreign leaders?

Most of the time, the National Security Council — the overseas policy arm of the White House — memorializes presidential telephone or video calls with overseas heads of the nation on the so-called TNet machine, the officers said. This pinnacle-secret-level laptop community is the principal platform the aides use to do their jobs. It connects with a top-secret network referred to as JWICS, which’s more extensively used elsewhere in the government branch.

TNet has got admission to controls and auditing safeguards. For example, it maintains music of who created or uploaded files, who looked at them, who changed them, and the way and who published them. When officials make a “package deal” — essentially, a brand new file — in TNet, they can set controls so any colleague who works on a particular situation, like European affairs or counterterrorism, has an admission.

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What is going on in TNet?

Officials can store any report that is classified to the pinnacle-mystery degree — the best class — so long as it isn’t “code phrase,” a period relating to a specialized category of even extra sensitive pinnacle-secret information that officers are permitted to know approximately best if they had been granted specific get admission to it.

Officials with a popular top-secret security clearance will not accept code-word approval to learn about covert activities unrelated to their work. For example, an aide running on North Korea policy could no longer have been instructed about making plans for the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Similarly, documents containing intelligence assisting the planned raid were no longer stored inside the regular TNet device.