Remembering Duane Hodges

As we watch our leaders treat America’s national defense secrets like a joke, it’s wise to remember the little people who died protecting them

His is hardly a household name. His family remembers Duane Hodges, as do some people in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where Duane hailed from (and where he is buried). Some elderly Navy veterans remember him, as does the National Security Agency, where Duane Hodges is engraved in the agency’s memorial wall, one of the 178 names (so far) listed of Americans who died while serving NSA. Otherwise, he’s been forgotten.

However, Duane Hodges’ death in combat at the age of 21, over a half-century ago, on the other side of the world, has been on my mind recently due to the headlines. Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, faces multiple prosecutions. The most serious of these, legally speaking, pertains to Trump’s intentional mishandling of highly classified information after he left the White House in early 2021. As this newsletter has previously reported in detail, these are serious charges and Trump appears to be guilty, and provably so, of storing Top Secret intelligence in his bathroom, among other places, while attempting to conceal this crime from the FBI. VIPs seldom face prison in such affairs, but less august citizens wind up behind bars for such misdeeds. Trump may not go to trial in this case before the election, but he is in serious legal jeopardy regardless.

That said, current President Joe Biden doesn’t have much cause to gloat. He, too, mishandled highly classified intelligence after he left the vice presidency in early 2017. Classified, including Top Secret, paperwork somehow wound up in his Delaware garage, next to Biden’s beloved Corvette. The Department of Justice’s recent assessment, that Biden broke the law but is too elderly and forgetful to be prosecuted effectively, was legally edifying for the White House while politically disastrous.

It's painfully clear that our leaders feel that rules are for little people. Certainly, protecting our nation’s defense secrets is nothing that any top politico can be bothered with these days. That’s for lesser Americans like Duane Hodges. Trump would probably dismiss Duane as a “sucker” who died for our country, while you wonder if Biden thinks any non-Corvette owner merits his attention.