To the editor:

As the debacle over classified documents at Mar-a-Lago unfolds, I am overwhelmed with questions.

News reports indicate that the National Archives is just now realizing exactly what documents were taken. Is there not some kind of protocol regarding who has which documents? Is the handling of these important papers so reliant on honesty and the rule of law that they can be so easily removed? How many of them were possibly copied and distributed?

Yes, perhaps the former president was squirreling these files away each time he received them, but even then there should be a record of which documents he had and when he received them. Granted the volume of information the archives deals with must be incredible. It worries me the amount of time the boxes of material languished at an unsecure location before they were retrieved just because the former president must be treated with kid gloves.

Libraries seem to be on top of the books checked out. Perhaps a similar system should be implemented at the archives. If our national security is indeed at risk, this information should not have been so easily acquired by a rogue person in power.

I imagine our forefathers were counting on lawmakers who respected the importance of retrieving, cataloguing and honoring their constitutional oaths regarding classified information, not a guy who repeatedly destroyed and abused the process.

Carol Cole,

Ottawa