…is about to get a long-overdue overhaul for the 21st century. It takes too long, and costs too much. I haven’t had a clearance in over a quarter of a century, and lack of one has probably limited my income opportunities.
9 thoughts on “The Security-Clearance Process”
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It definitely needs improvement as well as security of the information collected on personal individuals. I’m still annoyed nobody went to jail for giving away my personal data to foreign governments.
But in terms of earning potential; I found totally leaving the government sector to do wonders to my income. I used to be content with being in the top 25% of wage earners while as a NASA contractor. Life in the “cut throat” world of commercial enterprises is so much fairer and lucrative. Bonus, no one asks about my personal affairs for the last 15 years.
Finally, if someone like Anthony Weiner can have access to classified information without a grand jury even being concerned, then what’s the point of all the theater of security?
You’re right about Weiner….
The number and scale of national security disasters and abuses under Obama was unprecedented. Lucky for him, he had the entire media establishment covering for him or the public would have demanded a response similar to how we handled things in WWII if not back in the founding fathers days.
When I was a civilian employee of the Navy, I worked for months on a provisional security clearance, restricted from about 50% of my job. This was in the early 1980s.
I’ve held clearances at different levels for most of my adult life (I’m 61). The process sure could use improvement, that’s for sure. The one good thing about having a clearance is I can rest easy knowing my computer job won’t be outsourced to China or India.
Before I went to med school, I was an Astro engineer…Got hired by TRW, and because my TS/SCI clearance was (almost) lapsed they wanted to re-screen me…..
They had me sitting in a bullpen, doing absolutely NOTHING at all, for 40 hours a week while that happened. People had been there for months. I lasted 5 weeks….
I had to wait a year, just about, in the late 80’s, for a Secret clearance, when I had departed the USAF a year before with a TS/SCI. After a few months, they got me an interim clearance, with a number of restrictions. Pretty sure my stuff got stuck in somebody’s in-box somewhere, but nobody could ever say what happened or why.
I know someone who recently got hired on at the Honeywell nuke plant in KC and he spent six months in a very large hall with many others reading books and playing games while they waited on their clearances.
I wonder these days just how much hoop-jumping my mother had to do when General Electric needed her to have a Q Clearance 70 years ago.