As far as the Trump administration is concerned, there are government secrets and then there are government secrets.

就特朗普政府而言，有这样的政府机密，也有那样的政府机密。

Details sought by a federal court about a military flight of immigrants that landed many days ago with video cameras recording its arrival? Sorry, judge, too secret to reveal, even now long after the fact.

联邦法院要求提供有关一架多天前降落、有摄像机记录其抵达情况的运送移民军用飞机的详细信息？对不起，法官，这事太机密了，即使事情已经过去很久也不能透露。

Details about an upcoming military strike against American enemies disclosed by the president’s top national security advisers on an unsecured group text chat? Not classified, not a breach of national security and not a big deal.

总统的高级国家安全顾问在一个不安全的群聊里披露了即将对美国敌人进行军事打击的细节？这不是机密，不是对国家安全的威胁，没什么大不了的。

What constitutes an official secret in this new era in Washington, it turns out, seems to depend on who is asking and who is telling. The juxtaposition of two cases involving sensitive information in the same week reinforces just how situational President Trump’s approach to government secrecy can be.

事实证明，在华盛顿的这个新时代，究竟什么构成官方秘密似乎取决于是谁在发问，是谁在说。在同一周内发生两起涉及敏感信息的事例凸显了特朗普总统对待政府保密的方式是多么的“双标”。

And it illustrates Mr. Trump’s remarkable capacity for bending political reality to his will without worrying about facts or consistency. After all, this is a president who has made Canada and Europe out to be enemies not allies, who rewrote history to claim that Ukraine started the war with Russia and who sent lawyers to court to argue that Elon Musk is not really in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency.

这也说明了特朗普有一种非凡的能力，可以随心所欲地扭曲政治现实，而不用担心事实或一致性。毕竟，这是一位把加拿大和欧洲说成是敌人而不是盟友的总统，他改写历史，声称是乌克兰挑起了俄乌战争，他派律师上法庭，辩称埃隆·马斯克并不是政府效率部的真正负责人。

This has become so common that the disparity in what constitutes a secret played out without much acknowledgment of the disparity. On the one hand, the Trump administration invoked the so-called state secrets privilege to defy a federal judge trying to determine whether its no-hearing, no-due-process deportation of immigrants was legal. On the other hand, Mr. Trump brushed off the stunning disclosure of a planned attack on Houthi militants on a group chat that inadvertently included a journalist on the commercial platform Signal.

这样的事已经变得司空见惯，以至于在何为秘密的判定上存在的“双标”可以在不知不觉中起作用。一方面，特朗普政府援引所谓的国家机密特权来对抗一位联邦法官，这位法官试图就政府不经听证和正当程序就驱逐移民的行为是否合法做出裁决。另一方面，特朗普对在民用平台Signal的群聊中披露对胡塞武装发动袭击的计划又不以为意，群中还有一位无意中被拉入的记者。

“What’s baffling is the claim that pending military operations are not so sensitive after all, while the facts of a widely reported deportation that has already occurred cannot be disclosed,” said Steven Aftergood, who spent decades on government secrecy issues at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s hard to take secrecy seriously as an instrument of national security when it is being manipulated so obviously for self-serving political ends.”

“令人费解的是，声称即将进行的军事行动根本不怎么敏感，而已经发生、被广泛报道的驱逐出境的事实却不能披露，”在美国科学家联合会从事政府保密问题研究数十年的史蒂文·阿夫特古德说。“当保密被如此明显地操纵，以达到自私的政治目的时，很难把保密当作国家安全的工具来认真对待。”

In both cases, the information at the heart of the issue is a time stamp. In the immigration case, Judge James E. Boasberg has ordered the administration to tell him what time the plane transporting Venezuelans deemed to be gang members took off from U.S. soil, what time it left U.S. air space, what time it landed and what time the migrants were officially transferred out of U.S. custody.

这两件事的核心信息都是时间标记。在移民案件中，詹姆斯·E·博阿斯堡法官命令政府告诉他，运送被视为帮派成员的委内瑞拉人的飞机何时从美国领土起飞，何时离开美国领空，何时降落，以及移民何时正式脱离美国政府的监管。

The judge wants those details to determine whether the administration illegally violated his order to turn the plane around. The administration has said that information is too sensitive to give to him.

法官想要这些细节来决定政府是否非法违反了他让飞机返航的命令。政府表示，这些信息太敏感，不能提供给他。

本月早些时候，特朗普政府将一群委内瑞拉移民驱逐到萨尔瓦多特科卢卡的一所监狱，尽管联邦法官下令停止对他们的转移。

In the case of the Signal chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave colleagues on the group chat (and the journalist mistakenly added to it) the precise time that U.S. warplanes and drones would strike the Houthis a couple hours beforehand.

在Signal事件中，国防部长皮特·海格塞斯在群聊中提前几小时告诉同事们——以及被误加进去的记者——美国战机和无人机将打击胡塞武装的准确时间。

Presumably, that information might have been of some use to those Houthis being targeted, had they known it. But the White House and Mr. Hegseth are essentially saying that that information actually was not all that sensitive.

可以想见如果胡塞武装知道了这些信息，对他们会有所帮助。但白宫和海格塞斯基本上是在说，这些信息实际上并不是那么敏感。

“We have said all along that no classified material was sent on this messaging thread,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing this week. “There were no locations, no sources or methods revealed and there were certainly no war plans discussed.”

“我们一直都说，这个群聊里没有发出过机密材料，”白宫新闻秘书卡洛琳·莱维特在本周的一次新闻发布会上说。“没有透露地点、信源或方法，当然也没有讨论战争计划。”

She did not mention the time estimates. Instead, when pressed about them by reporters, Ms. Leavitt changed the subject and attacked the journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, and Democrats for making too much of the whole thing. She then assailed former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the botched troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

她没有提到其中涉及的预估时间。相反，当记者追问这些问题时，莱维特改变了话题，并攻击记者、《大西洋》主编杰弗里·戈德堡，称民主党人过分渲染此事。然后，她抨击前总统拜登从阿富汗拙劣的撤军。

National security veterans in both parties scoffed at the contention that the details that Mr. Hegseth provided about the imminent strike were not classified during the group chat that also included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the national security adviser Michael Waltz and others.

对于海格塞斯在群聊中提供的有关即将发生的袭击的细节不构成机密的说法，两党的国家安全资深人士都嗤之以鼻。参加群聊的还有副总统JD·万斯、国务卿鲁比奥、国家安全顾问迈克尔·沃尔兹等人。

“There is absolutely no way in which the information shared in that group chat was not classified at the highest levels,” said Oona Hathaway, a former Pentagon lawyer now at Yale Law School. “I’m frankly stunned that anyone would try to suggest otherwise. Such detailed information about an imminent military operation is precisely the kind of information that is most closely guarded.”

“在这个群聊中分享的信息绝对不可能不是最高机密，”前五角大楼律师、现就职于耶鲁大学法学院的乌娜·哈撒韦说。“坦率地说，我很震惊，居然有人会试图提出不同的看法。这种关于即将开展的军事行动的详细信息恰恰是最需要严密保护的。”

She added: “This is all the more absurd in light of the government’s assertion that the state secrets privilege permits it to withhold information from the district court about a plane of migrants that had already landed.”

她还说：“鉴于政府声称国家机密特权允许它向地区法院隐瞒一架已经降落的移民飞机的信息，这就更加荒谬了。”

While less sensational secrecy lapses have typically triggered serious investigations involving possible criminal liability, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday seemed to suggest that she did not plan to pursue the issue.

即使远没有如此轰动的保密失误通常都会引发严肃的调查，可能关系到刑事责任，然而司法部长帕姆·邦迪周四似乎表示，她不打算追究这个问题。

Just last week, though, Ms. Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, announced that the Justice Department was opening a criminal investigation into a leak to The New York Times about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. In his announcement, Mr. Blanche said that the leaked information was “inaccurate but nevertheless classified.” How false information could be classified, he did not explain.

不过，就在上周，邦迪的副手托德·布兰奇宣布，司法部将对有人向《纽约时报》泄露有关委内瑞拉黑帮“特伦·德·阿拉瓜”的信息一事展开刑事调查。布兰奇在声明中说，泄露的信息“不准确，但仍然属于机密”。他没有解释虚假信息如何能成为机密。

国防部长皮特·海格塞斯（右）在 Signal群聊中向同事们（以及一名被误加入群的记者）提前透露了美国战机和无人机在几小时后打击胡塞武装的准确时间。

Mr. Trump has always viewed violations of national security secrecy through the lens of who is doing the violating. He won the presidency for the first time in 2016 at least in part by excoriating his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for using an unsecure private server to send email while in office. He led crowds in chants of “lock her up” and declared that if he were elected “no one will be above the law” when it comes to endangering government secrets.

关于国家安全机密违规问题，特朗普一直是对人不对事。他在2016年首次赢得总统大选，至少在一定程度上是因为他严厉指责对手、前国务卿希拉里·克林顿在任期内使用不安全的私人服务器发送电子邮件。他带领人群高呼“把她关起来”，并宣称如果他当选，在危害政府机密的问题方面，“没有人能凌驾于法律之上”。

But once he got to office, Mr. Trump regularly disregarded warnings about protecting government information. He posted sensitive satellite imagery of Iran online. He kept using an unsecured mobile phone even after being told it was monitored by Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies. He tore up official documents and threw them to the floor despite laws requiring they be preserved, leaving aides to collect the pieces and tape them back together.

但特朗普一上台后却经常无视有关保护政府信息的警告。他在网上发布了伊朗的敏感卫星图像。他在被告知手机受到俄罗斯和中国情报机构的监控后，仍使用不安全的手机。他撕毁需依法保存的官方文件，扔在地上，让助手们去收集碎片用胶带粘好。

Most memorably, of course, Mr. Trump took classified documents when he left the White House in January 2021, storing them in a shower, an office, a bedroom and a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate and defying a subpoena requiring him to return them. When the special counsel Jack Smith later indicted him for over his handling of secrets and conspiring to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump derided the case as partisan persecution.

当然，最令人难忘的是他在2021年1月离开白宫时带走机密文件，把它们存放在马阿拉歌庄园的淋浴间、办公室、卧室和宴会厅里，并无视要求他归还文件的传票。当特别检察官杰克·史密斯后来以处理机密和密谋妨碍司法为由起诉他时，特朗普嘲笑此案是党派迫害。

When Mr. Biden was found to also have classified documents at his home in Delaware, however, Mr. Trump expressed outrage, even though Mr. Biden, unlike Mr. Trump, promptly reported the discovery himself, returned the documents and cooperated with investigators. “Trump was peanuts by comparison,” Mr. Trump declared at one point, referring to himself in the third person.

然而，当人们发现拜登在特拉华州的家中也有机密文件时，特朗普表示愤怒（尽管与特朗普不同，拜登自己迅速报告了这一发现，归还了文件，并与调查人员合作）。“相比之下，特朗普的事就是小题大做，”特朗普一度这样宣称。

Even on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s team fell back on a whataboutism defense, insisting that the disclosure of a military operation in advance on a Signal chat was a nothingburger compared to Democratic transgressions.

即使在周四，特朗普团队又再次选择了比烂的角度，坚称在Signal聊天中提前披露一项军事行动，与民主党的违规行为相比根本不值一提。

While Ms. Bondi did not seem troubled enough by the Trump team’s disclosure of attack plans to even initiate an investigation, her department went to court this week to protect the secrecy of information that could compromise the Trump administration politically and legally.

邦迪对特朗普团队披露攻击计划的行为似乎没有太大意见，甚至没有发起调查，但她所在的部门本周向法院提起诉讼，要求保护可能在政治和法律上损害特朗普政府的信息的机密性。

The flight data for the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants would help Judge Boasberg figure out whether the administration ignored his order to turn the plane around so that he could first decide whether the expulsion was legal.

驱逐委内瑞拉移民的飞行数据可以帮助博阿斯堡法官弄清楚，政府是否无视了他的命令，当时他要求飞机掉头返回，由他先裁定驱逐是否合法后再行动。

Ms. Bondi’s department refused to comply, arguing in a brief that disclosure “would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs.” How that would be a danger once the flight was over was not clear, but the administration included a declaration from Mr. Rubio saying that it would “erode the credibility of the United States’ assurances” to other countries “that information will be maintained in confidence.”

邦迪的司法部拒绝遵照执行，并在一份简报中辩称，相关披露“将对国家安全和外交事务构成相当程度的危险”。目前尚不清楚飞行结束后披露还能构成怎样的危险，但政府附上了鲁比奥的一份声明，称这将“削弱”美国向其他国家保证“信息会被保密”的“信誉”。

However, the government of El Salvador, which agreed to the Trump administration request to accept and imprison the Venezuelan migrants, was hardly trying to keep the matter secret. Indeed, the country’s president posted a video of the arrival. Hiding the time of the arrival did not seem a matter of concern.

然而，应特朗普政府要求接收并监禁委内瑞拉移民的萨尔瓦多政府似乎根本没打算保密。事实上，该国总统发布了一段飞机抵达的视频。看起来他没有隐瞒到达时间的想法。

司法部长帕姆·邦迪坚持认为，在Signal聊天中提前披露军事行动的恶劣程度比不上民主党以前的过失。

In an example of a Washington oddity, the two cases converged in a way on Thursday when the same Judge Boasberg, acting in a separate lawsuit filed in response to the attack plan group chat, ordered the Trump administration to preserve all Signal messages from March 11 to 15 to comply with federal records law.

周四，这两件事在某种程度上有了交集——展现了华盛顿特有的光怪陆离。在针对攻击计划群聊提起的另一起诉讼中，同样是那位博阿斯堡法官命令，特朗普政府应依据联邦记录法保存3月11日至15日间的所有Signal信息。