I'm having another issue with this explanation: How do border officers determine, if the information was confidential and if he wasn't authorized to have it?

I'm not saying it can't be determined, but it feels like an issue that can't be easily resolved during a border check within a few hours.

Calling it "confidential information" from los alamos is probably just a trick to evoke thoughts and assumptions that he was stealing nuclear secrets.

In reality, given the pattern of intimidation and lies from this government, it was probably something innocuous that was trumped up even just to be a violation of an NDA (e.g. maybe a draft of a not-yet-published non-unusual research paper that included an author from Los Alamos), or else this government would have emphasized the sensitive or dangerous nature of that "confidential information".

None of the articles I found went into more detail than the NY Times one. What they all say in common is that the French researcher was denied entrance. If the US version is true (and I can't be sure either way), then the presupposition would be that individual was already on a DHS list, not that customs necessarily found it.

As for whether they knowingly let a spy leave, that would depend on a full timeline.

> As for whether they knowingly let a spy leave, that would depend on a full timeline.

No it does not if the defense for denying him entry was knowing that he was a spy?

Stop arguing out of both sides of your mouth. So far both proffered explanations are unacceptable.

To be clear the two answers so far have been,

1: we found personal comments of him on his phone critical of the administration and denied him entry based on that, which is unacceptable on free speech grounds

Or

2: he was known or found to have secrets from one of our nuclear labs and was denied entry based on the fact that we knew he had these forbidden files, and we let him go. This is unacceptable on national security grounds.

You can’t mix and match from the two scenarios

That's a false dichotomy. The severity depends on what the individual attempted to remove. Nuclear secrets might be unacceptable to allow him to leave. Something more administrative might not be worth the jurisdiction hassle to prosecute but still get the individual flagged against re-entry.

Explain the false dichotomy.

If he stole documents I don’t want my government only flagging him for denial to reentry. If he stole documents from our nuclear labs I want him in cuffs.

How am I being inconsistent if your “false dichotomy” claim persists?

I didn't say anything about Inconsistency, so I will set that to the side.

My entire point is that these things are seldom so black and white as put forward. The US administration has a self serving answer, but so do the French and this anonymous scientist. Which do you think is less professionally damaging for a European, being denied entrance due to views on American politics or being denied based on mishandling of classified material?

In an ideal world, I would prefer to see any mishandling of classification prosecuted, that seldom is how it works.

Without knowing a timeline, it isn't even clear which administration was running things under which events.

Nothing in your response outlined a possibility that was not in 1 of the 2 options given by my own government.

I don't give a fuck what the French or Europeans think. I am holding my own government accountable to what are ostensibly the values we share(freedom of speech and national security) and finding them lacking. It requires zero input from the French scientist in question for me to be upset with the situation

And no, I don't need a timeline to understand this because my problem with the government's own explanation does not have a time based component

If there was a policy passed down to the thousands of homeland security officers at airports to screen phones for critical comments about Trump, is it plausible that not one person would leak that to the press? It sounds absurd.

We get ~200,000 foreign visitors flying into US airports a day. That we have a handful of people over months who had issues seems more like the normal rate, and evidence there is no weird screening policy, which would probably affect thousands, not dozens.