[NAT. REVIEW] Revoking Brennan’s Security Clearance: The Right Thing, Even if for the Wrong Reason

No...it shouldn't. Assume the administration changes, the CIA director is replaced and decides to retire from working. He has intimate knowledge and experience with ongoing operations. What if he is needed to talk about a current or past operation? They couldn't give him any updates. There would be a vast pool of resources that could no longer be of service.

 

That information should be documented and passed on long before he's left. Its required. Anyways you don't need a security clearance to say what you know.

 

No. Things change in ongoing investigations. He may need to be told current status in order to offer an opinion. You lose an operatives' experience and ability to fully aid the country.

Tell me one negative about anyone maintaining their clearance after they retire or start a job that doesn't require it.

 

It is unfortunate that brennan has been silenced by trump.

 

This is nonsense. people help all the time in investigations without having clearance. Brennan can say what knows easy enough. Your weird hypothetical of people having to be given classified information to extract information from them is not compelling. There are no private companies that behave in the manner you are talking about.

One downside of someone having clearance to classified information they don't need to know? really? they could leak it.

 

Sinple example...even though I have retired I still have my clearance. A few years ago I worked a project at a secret site with one other person as we were the only two with the expertise and clearance to do it. If I no longer had my clearance and he needed some advice or help he could not tell me any of their current particulars...mainframe, OS, error codes, etc.

This is not an obscure example.

As to your negative, if the person maintains their clearance they are still subject to their agreements regarding the dissemination of classified material. Just because you have a clearance doesn't mean you have access to information. I have a TS DoD level clearance. I can't just stroll into a classified area and start reading classified info. I still have to be cleared for access via a responsible party.

 

There's nothing wrong with certain high level people maintaining their clearance after they retire or move on.....so long as they maintain actions befitting a person with that type of clearance or role. As soon as they start putting out politically charged rhetoric in public and running their mouths baselessly accusing high level politicians of treason.....essentially entering the Alex Jones realm of political commentary, they no longer deserve that clearance and it should be revoked. People like that have no business being exposed to current classified information. They in effect invalidated their experience and made themselves useless to the country.

 

Believe me, if someone violates their agreement, they should be revoked. They just shouldn't be revoked simply because they change jobs.

 

This is how every private company works. I can't call up old coworkers and ask them about current work that's confidential. That's why when you leave you train a new employee if you can or you document all your work.

 

You are 100% correct, and usually those clearances are not revoked due to changing jobs, though if you don't use your clearance for a long enough period of time, obviously with exceptions, it'll be automatically suspended. It's usually not that big of a deal though because reactivating a clearance is much easier than getting it the first time. They simply have to do a quick check on everything that has happened in the time between the clearance being active and the present day. A revoked clearance is much different and typically wouldn't happen without cause. Going from TV station to TV station baselessly accusing the president of treason or publicly engaging in other conspiracy theory nonsense would generally qualify as cause.

 

When it comes to the intelligence community, it's a little bit different....but it's not as simple as merely calling someone up. There are official steps that have to be made for anyone to be read in on classified information. A clearance alone is not enough, you have to also officially have a "need to know", and you can't just say that someone has a need to know, there's paperwork that has to be done. A person can have a TS-SCI clearance and not be allowed to view classified documents if they aren't deemed to have a "need to know".

Typically top tier intelligence officials will hold on to their clearances for life so that they can be read in to situations and current intelligence officials can use their expertise.....but they can piss that all away if their actions cause them to lose their clearance.

 

When I left companies current executives would often call me for info and advice. But comparing someone that worked for a computer company to someone that is deeply involved in national security is silly. Past Secretary of States have been involved in foreign affairs work, and I am sure past intelligence people have been involved in intelligence gathering and analysis.

Again, this "problem" surfaces during the trump administration. Hasn't been an issue in 44 previous administrations...

 

The "problem" of high level intelligence officials disgracing themselves seems like a fairly new problem, but it's kind of hard to blame that on Trump. Clearly things at the top got pretty rotten and we're just finding out about it now, but it's not something that happened overnight.

 

Anyone?

 

Never happened as far as I know. Flynn didn't even lose his after criticizing Obama and Clinton.

 

Yeah but let's face it, the Obama administration wasn't really known for being responsible when it comes to the intelligence community. Them not doing the right thing shouldn't surprise anyone.

 

Trump with his nuanced knowledge of the intellegence community made this decision based on that nuance, not spiteful self interest in sending a message to current clearance holders who's livelyhoods depend on it it to be silent on criticism of the administration.

Of course, so obvious B.

 

Documenting work is always a good idea, but new updates and new hardware cause new problems. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining security clearances.

It takes a lot of time, expense and effort to acquire one. It is a valuable thing to have. To simply revoke it because your job no longer requires it, is a tremendous wast of expense.

While you can’t call up old coworkers, my former coworkers can call me if it is confidential AND it relates to my clearance because...you know...I still have my clearance. It also allows me to have a foot in the door if I should desire to reenter the work force. Companies love to hire qualified people that already have a clearance. They don’t have to waste months of time and money to get someone cleared.

I still don’t understand why this is even an issue. Again, if one deserves to have their clearance revoked, by all means do it. Otherwise, we have been maintaining clearances for years with no harm.

 

Right...my example was a real world ‘every man’ situation and there are many more people critical to the security of our country that need to maintain a clearance other than me. (Although once upon a time, I could have been critical to a DoD project )

 

I thought it was interesting Obama never revoked Flynn's clearance despite him turning sour and developing a mercenary rep. There's a lot of power and access to the clearances than some of us might feel objectionable when they're not in service.

The key qualifier is that they have served their nation, and should get respectfully get the benefit of the doubt.