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Trump threatens critics with loss of their security clearances

This is yet another example of just how much Trump doesn't understand how this shit works.

Let's say he revokes the security clearance of - I dunno - Brennan.

The guy was a CIA analyst for 25 years. Head of the CIA under Obama. Presumably, he knows intimately how the agency and all its parts work. He knows sources and methods. Procedures. Has an extensive knowledge of operations stretching back decades. That doesn't go away if Trump decides to yank his clearance.
 
Trausti said:
Why do former government officials have security clearances at all? Strange.
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A TS clearance is good for five years. Access is revoked with loss of position. But you can be a contractor and retain access. So people like Brennan are valuable to companies like McDonnel-Douglas. Without a clearance they can’t get such jobs. So effectively he’s threatening their livelihoods.

SLD
 
According to MSNBC, most of these guys do not at this point of time have security clearances. If they got a job somewhere that needed it, they would have to reapply like everybody else. Trump as usual, is ignorant and full of shit.
 
State News: Trump is right to pull security clearances from those actively undermining his administration

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018...-actively-undermining-his-administration.html
President Trump is considering the entirely proper move of pulling security clearances from a number of former government officials including disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper and several others. These are all people who have been abusing the credibility gained by their previous positions and potentially their continued access to our secrets in a partisan political manner.
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James Comey is a Republican.

There is a longstanding tradition of granting former officials continued clearance to allow them to be consulted about actions they took and insights they might have. There is no requirement to do this but when all, regardless of party affiliation, are supposed to be working toward our security it provided a continuity of the institutional knowledge. That is no longer the case with these individuals.
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James Comey is a Republican.

They seem to be wholly invested in undermining the national security priorities and policies of the Trump administration. And in some cases, it seems they were likely to have been undermining the Trump campaign while still members of the Obama administration. A security clearance is based on trust and no one should trust James Comey with continued access to our national secrets when he wrote in his own book that he improperly took classified information with him after he was fired.
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Unsubstantiated. The memos under discussion were notes from his one-on-one meetings with Trump where Trump tried to tamper with investigations or whatever it was. See here.


John Brennan has become increasingly unhinged and has called President Trump treasonous. How can he be allowed anywhere near the inner workings of the Trump administration as it works to conduct our nation’s foreign policy? Another person likely to lose his clearance is Former CIA Director Michael Hayden who publicly warned people not to work for President Trump. That is not compatible with offering any kind of help at all to that same administration.
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Michael Hayden, by the way, is an independent. He worked for Clinton then W. When he worked for W he was all into torture and NSA spying.

Thus, overall, CNN article in the op is fake news.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
According to MSNBC, most of these guys do not at this point of time have security clearances. If they got a job somewhere that needed it, they would have to reapply like everybody else. Trump as usual, is ignorant and full of shit.
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Yweah... he was being taunted this morning "he needs to revoke Dean Rusk and Millard Fillmore's security clearances!"
 
Trausti said:
Why do former government officials have security clearances at all? Strange.
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I was just reading about this one--high officials normally keep their clearance for a bit so they can help with the transition.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
Trausti said:
Why do former government officials have security clearances at all? Strange.
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I was just reading about this one--high officials normally keep their clearance for a bit so they can help with the transition.
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It costs nothing if their backgroud check has not expired.
And even that can be relatively inexpensive if they get the new check before the old one expires.
It's when they lapse that you have to start all over again.

But as to why, anyone with a need to know can have a clearance as long as someone sponsors them, says that they have a need to know in order to do a job.
First three years of my job at GD, my SECRET was based on my last Navy BI, which was for a TOP SECRET++.

It's not a big deal.

And you don't need an active clearance to testify about classified things, as long as the court, or committee, have the clearance to hear your testimony.
I wonder if that's where this is headed?
Dems take the govt., but can't get the clearances to sit on the committees...
 
Trausti said:
Why do former government officials have security clearances at all? Strange.
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It's done so that former intelligence leaders can be consulted by current intelligence leaders. Allowing ex-leaders to retain security clearance is only important if you want your intelligence agencies to be more competent. If your goal is to help a hostile foreign power undermine us, then it makes zero sense to allow former intelligence leaders to keep their security clearance.
 
A Secret is good for 10 years, a TS is good for five. Security clearances don't actually expire, they simply go stale without current reinvestigation. Having a clearance at all, even a stale one, is a valuable commodity as a stale one can be reinvestigated at any time and made current. A revoked clearance, on the other hand, is a serious matter, as then the clearance isn't stale but doesn't exist at all.
 
Paul Ryan said not to worry about it, that President Trump is just trolling us.

Everybody loves trolling, right? When someone is trolling us, we all just laugh and shake our heads and proceed about our business as if nothing happened, right?
 
James Brown said:
Paul Ryan said not to worry about it, that President Trump is just trolling us.

Everybody loves trolling, right? When someone is trolling us, we all just laugh and shake our heads and proceed about our business as if nothing happened, right?
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RayJ needs to add an Ignore Option for the President.
 
Keith&Co. said:
I wonder if that's where this is headed?
Dems take the govt., but can't get the clearances to sit on the committees...
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Interesting thought--although I suspect it's more about his small-mindedness than some big plan like that.
 
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