For all the scandal over the multiple government officials leaving top-secret government documents lying about recently, it's worth pointing out that a middle-school girl already did this years ago and it was like totally cooler when she did it:
On a winter's day in 1984, a briefcase stuffed with classified government documents showed up in a building in Pittsburgh, borne by someone who most certainly wasn't supposed to have them.
That someone was 13-year-old Kristin Preble. She took the papers to school as a show-and-tell project for her eighth grade class. Her dad had found them in his Cleveland hotel room several years earlier and taken them home as a souvenir.
Just as an aside, here's a little tip for you: Classified government docs are not "souvenirs." If you, the average citizen, find them, they are nothing more to you than a quick one-way trip to federal prison. Get out of the vicinity as soon as you lay eyes on them and call the FBI.
That's what eventually happened here — sort of. The documents were allegedly "left behind [in the hotel room] by Carter press secretary Jody Powell." The kid's dad "took them to his Franklin Park home, where they sat for more than three years as a faintly appreciated keepsake," after which young Kristin decided to bring them into her social studies class to show her teacher:
Off the girl went to Ingomar Middle School on Jan. 19, 1984, with the zippered briefcase.
Teacher Jim DeLisio's eyes popped when he saw the warnings on the documents inside. Among them: "Classified, Confidential, Executive" and "Property of the United States Government."
"I truly didn't want to look at it," he said then. "I was just too … scared. I didn't want to know."
This guy knows what's up!
But eventually temptation got the better of Mr. DeLisio:
That night, he said, he and his wife and daughter pored over the documents, containing "everything you'd want to know from A to Z" on world and U.S. developments. One folder was marked "Iran." Libya was also in the mix.
Foolish man! The teacher tried to get in touch with the Preble family, and when they couldn't be found he called the FBI, who "swiftly" retrieved the papers. Mr. DeLisio somehow avoided prison time, but he was still in trouble with the school district:
Despite steering the secrets back to their proper place, DeLisio was reprimanded by school officials for calling the authorities before reaching the Preble family or them.
You just can't win with the government. Young Kristin, meanwhile, came out the ultimate victor in all of this:
As for Kristin, she earned a niche in history and a "B" on her school project.
