Kurt Schlichter/Town Hall: Help, I’m being oppressed! My freedom of speech was been utterly stripped from me because when I retired from the Army those fascist monsters took away my TOP SECRET security clearance. See, a security clearance is a special privilege I should be entitled to exploit for as long as I want to because… well, shut up peasant, that’s why. I learned this in my Con Law class, right after we studied the Constitution’s text enumerating the rights to abortion, wedding cake baking servitude, and to be called by the bizarre pronoun of your – I mean “xir” – choice.
Oh wait, all of that – except the giving up my clearance part – is utter nonsense.
But John Brennan, that hack, and his elite pals are supposed to get the special privilege of keeping it. Why? As a professional courtesy. See, security clearances are things you pass out as favors or rewards, I guess, at least among the elite. Courtesy among them, nothing for you, though. You aren’t special. You’re just some guy serving his country and not turning it into a profit center on the outside. Like a sucker.
I got my clearance for the same reason you readers who got one got yours –because I needed it to do my job in the service of our country. And when I stopped needing it because I was no longer doing a job in the service of my country, I didn’t get to keep it to inflate my value as a pundit or “consultant.” Mine went away. As did yours, I’ll wager. The chances are pretty infinitesimal that you are one of the special somebodies who get handed power and privilege not to serve our country but as a perk for being part of the in-crowd.
Being a colonel was just a job for me, and doing what you did was just a job for you. But for a lot of these retired generals and senior bureaucrat timeservers, it’s a lifestyle. I always saw my eagle as leased; they think they hold the pink slip on their positions. Oh, and do they ever have contempt for Normals like you.
Security clearances get pulled routinely when the holder no longer needs access because the fewer people with access, the safer the info is – pretty basic stuff. MORE
From above: “I got my clearance for the same reason you readers who got one got yours –because I needed it to do my job in the service of our country. And when I stopped needing it because I was no longer doing a job in the service of my country, I didn’t get to keep it to inflate my value as a pundit or “consultant.” Mine went away. As did yours, I’ll wager.”
Yep, exactly. I had what at the time was referred to as a “Nose Bleed” clearance. But it was narrow and wide at the same time. I worked on multiple classified programs at the same time, but I was only cleared on the aspects I was directly involved in. Hence, that ‘need to know’ aspect you’ve all probably heard before.
This was all technical stuff, nothing involving spy shit. Some of it did involve foreign tech that I’m sure we didn’t want the other guys to know we had.
When I out processed, I signed a document related to each project, with details of what wasn’t to be talked about after my clearance was revoked. Two people in the room made all this very clear. I believed them. When I lost my clearance(s), I no longer had any access. But I was still under what amounts to a ‘non-disclosure’, and subject to criminal penalties for any disclosures. This wasn’t just me, it was everybody that worked where I did and left the organization.
As Winnie said 100 years ago – a few years after being humiliated by the ROP – “If 3 or more people know something it is NOT A SECRET.”. Sine Kurt is, and always has been , a conservative I agree with him.
LOWELL
You were warned as was Brennan. the diff is – you are a de;porable – John is “more equal than others!”! So John has no fear of breaking his word! And his contracts!
We were requested to get a security clearance by a major defense contractor for a program we were working on. I would have been the one with the security clearance and for contractors like ourselves, out side of the Federal Government, it was program specific. Very tight. We would have been required to have a safe in a special secured room where all documentation, including computers, prints, inspection records, and spare parts would be stored. The ceiling tiles had to be wired down so no one could enter from the ceiling. That’s before we even started talking about back ground checks. And like I say, that was only good for the program you were working on. The process was tightly regulated and surveilled. We decided it wasn’t worth it. It doesn’t sound at all like what these politicians get away with. A security clearance after you leave your post sounds ridiculous.
Trump should’ve been Frodo and Brennan Gollum saying my clearance/my precious in that picture with Trump kicking Brennan into the bottomless pit on Mt. Doom.
And my senator (Warner) is sponoring a bill that would prohibit the pulling of security clearnaces except for national security reasons and never for political reasons. Allowing former employees to hold on to their secret clearances somehow makes the nation more secure? Do retired physicians still get admitting privileges to hospitals? When you leave an intelligence agency there is never a compelling reason for you to comtinue keep your clearance credentials. He was an idiot governor and now an idiot senator.
Trump should institute a new policy: when someone leaves government service, their security clearance is automatically revoked. If the government decides that someone’s advice and counsel is valuable enough to warrant a security clearance after they leave government service, they should be cleared again because the circumstances under which they were granted their original security clearance has now changed.
John Brennan is an asshole, as is Phil Mudd. They have no right to a security clearance, and there should be a need for them to have one if it is in the best interests of the US. Over 4 million people have security clearances, and I think 3.9 million of those use it to feather their own nests or leak information to the MSM.
From Bad Brad: ” A security clearance after you leave your post sounds ridiculous.”
Dude, that eats on me too. That clearance (at least in my case) was provided by the feds. They sent people to talk to my school teachers, my peers, parents of my peers. Took over six months and I was told at the time (early 80’s) the monetary costs were over 50K.
I never had any illusions that I ‘owned’ that clearance. It belonged to my employer, the Army, and was for their benefit. Hell, it actually encumbered the shit out of me and at times was a massive pain in the ass. You also never knew who really wanted to just have a beer with you downtown and shoot the shit, and who was CID (Criminal Investigation Division) trying to trip you up. So you had to report conversations and places and times.
That’s why I’m really good at drinking alone today.
lowell. I wonder who the hell gave John Brennan a clearance?
The fact that he voted for Gus Hall for President? Gimmeafuckenbreak?
There is indeed a Deep State, and President Trump is their target.
What you say about the cost of an investigation is so correct. I’ll tell you my story about me, NATO, and my Security Clearance some day. It’s a hummdinger. Semper Fi.
From moe Tom: ” I’ll tell you my story about me, NATO, and my Security Clearance some day. ”
I’d like to hear it. I saw some go away for reasons that made little sense to me at the time. I had mine suspended because the hospital lost my medical records. Four days of physicals at two facilities (and the loss of about a quart of blood) fixed that.
Lowell. I’ll get back to you on iotwreport.
@Lowell I got the same special background investigation you did. After joining the USAF in November of 1973, I went overseas to work as an imagery interpreter in a Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. While there, the FBI visited everyone I had ever known and questioned them about every aspect of my character. Friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers, employers, people in my church were all visited by the FBI. I didn’t know this until I went home and saw them. I was being checked out to work at Strategic Air Command as a photo interpreter in the Talent Keyhole Program. That is the program that was run by the National Reconnaissance Office and the USAF. Basically, it was America’s spy satellite program. My clearance was deemed “TOP SECRET TK (for Talent Keyhole) RUFF/ZARF/UMBRA”. The commander in chief of SAC had to personally sign my clearance because I had access to what was known then as SAC’s “Bombing Encyclopedia” in order to do my job. The BE contained the complete dossier of every target in the world that SAC might need to eliminate by means of delivering special packages. That meant every route in and out of the target area for the strategic bombers, exact package placement coordinates, package yields, order of battle including every SAM site around so the bombers could avoid them and more. RUFF was the code for all satellite imagery or IMINT. Zarf was the code for all signal intelligence, or SIGINT. UMBRA was the code for the highest level of TOP SECRET there was. When I left the USAF, I no longer had a need to know this information, thus, my clearance ended. How in the world Brennen got his clearance in the first place, let alone retain it is unnerving.
@Moe T ~ “I wonder who the hell gave John Brennan a clearance?”
he was the daily intelligence briefer for Willy Clinton … more dots connected … no surprise