Since Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton started coughing and recently appeared to collapse as she was approaching her van, the Trump campaign and the public, including many in the skews media, have been calling for to release her medical records. Naturally, the Clinton campaign wants to see Trump’s medical records as well.
“The voters are entitled to know about the health of the next President of the United States!” the bombasters of radio and television infotainment, skews, and political spin have decreed.
But there are other considerations arguing for confidentiality. National security is at the top of the list.
It shouldn’t shock anyone to learn that the intelligence services of the world spend a great deal of time and money trying to gather medical intelligence about world leaders in government, military, and business. They are also intensely interested in the emotional and psychological makeup of their adversaries.
The physical health of an individual influences his or her ability to comprehend information and make decisions. From an intelligence perspective, knowledge of a leader’s physical and mental conditions adds to the information an adversary needs to influence an opponent’s decisions whether in diplomacy or warfare.
Would Nikita Khrushchev’s urinalysis results have been helpful to the CIA to aid President Eisenhower in dealing with the shootdown of our U-2 spy plane?
If the President was wearing a wireless Holter monitor to track an irregular heartbeat, would it be helpful to an adversary to know what that monitor indicated?
Or if the President was hospitalized with a traumatic injury, would the bandages, containers, and instruments bearing the President’s bodily fluids yield DNA results of intelligence value? What about laboratory tissue samples?
Would detailed and accurate knowledge of the President’s ailments and medications be useful to another government whose leader might be interested in disabling but not killing the President to cause the 25th Amendment to be invoked?
OpenCdA does not agree with those who demand that all presidential candidates must release medical information. The information may salve our curiosity, but that same information in the wrong hands will have serious adverse consequences in both diplomacy and warfare.
The medical conditions of the next President of the United States are indisputably a national security issue.
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