This is from a GD thread, no link, I’m not planning on arguing too much, I just want to know (half-pun unintended). Funnily, this is hard to search for on Google. From what (little) I understand, the highest security clearance in the US is “Need to Know,” not “has all knowledge.” However, the President is a special case that may not be worth mentioning. So rather simply, can the President ask for any document at any time and (resources and time permitting), say, read all of the Blue Book documents, or whatever Top Secret classified information if he wants? Or does he still operate on “Need To Know” i.e. if it’s not directly effecting major developments, the President does NOT need to know, and thus won’t be granted clearance because a branch of the pentagon/CIA/FBI/NSA/whatever can handle it just fine until it becomes immediately important or requires top-level permission?
ETA: To stave off pedants, I’m specifically referring to the President of the United States of America, head of the Executive Branch of the federal government.
We had a GQ thread back in May, Are there any government activities so secret that even the president doesn’t know about them? The consensus was that, legally speaking, under the Constitution it is not possible for any part of the exectuve branch of the United States federal government to classify something so high that they could legitimately tell the POTUS, “Sorry, sir, you aren’t cleared for that information”. Bureaucrats could stall, respectfully question why the President needs that info, resign in a huff, threaten to go to the media, or just flat out lie and (illegally) conceal things. There are also things that are private information of individual citizens and protected by law, like medical records or tax returns–even the President is not above the law. But there can be no legal basis for refusing to disclose a “state secret” to the President on “Need to Know” grounds.
That’s not the best way to summarize it. The President is completely responsible for making rules for the classification of information, and can change the rules at the stroke of a pen. Under the current rules, he is the ultimate arbiter of need to know, and there is constitutionally no basis for anyone to question his decisions.
That being said, most Presidents probably wouldn’t have the interest or the time in just saying, “Show me every single detail of every single classified program.”
First of all, there is no such thing as a “Need to Know” Clearance. There is confidential, secret, top secret, and then various subsets of top secret. Some categories(as in just the name) of top secret clearances are classified top secret themselves. The moral of the story is that the president can know anything he wants, but the realm of classified information is so vast that there is no way he could possibly have time to cover it all.
You’re somewhat off the mark here – even if someone has a top secret clearance, that doesn’t mean that they can browse through any classified document (even those which are only secret). Clearance plus a need to know equals access.
Exactly. I’d say he is dead on the mark, and in agreement with what you stated. There is no such thing as a “Need to Know” Clearance. ‘Need to know’ is just an additional criteria on top of clearance level to grant access.
I have had a Secret clearance a couple of times and have taken all that (boring) training. “Need to know” applies to any information you get under any clearance level. Even if you are cleared at or above the level of a piece of classified data, you are required to have a “need to know” to be able to access it. This is more a philosophy than a documented criterion. That is, there is no authority who must formally sign off on your need to know to get access to every piece of classified data. It’s more like a common-sense rule. But everyone is supposed to be aware of this so you don’t have someone who works on analysis of satellite data for the CIA walk into a defense contractor’s facility and demand to see plans for the latest stealth fighter.
I guess I botched the description a little. I’m aware that “Top Secret” is the highest classification, the point I was making is that, for most personnel, “Need to Know” is applied to Top Secret data, so a CIA Agent with “Top Secret” (or any level, really) clearance who specializes in Russian intelligence can’t, necessarily, get any Top Secret (or whatever level) data on Japan unless it’s necessary to his Russian investigations. I was more asking if there’s anything “Top Secret” in such a way that if the President wanted to, he couldn’t get it legally (to which appears the answer is no). In other words, the President obviously has the highest clearance, “Top Secret”, but I was (perhaps poorly) making the distinction between “Top Secret, but needs to get cleared on a Need to Know basis” and “Top Secret, can get his hands on anything he damn well pleases.”
Perhaps a better way of phrasing it would be “is there anything, in security terms, that the president Doesn’t Need to Know as far as getting approval goes.” It goes without saying that he doesn’t have time to read every tiny Top Secret CIA staff and operative report from 1976-1982, not to mention technically “important” things, and his staff will likely brief him on any data he ACTUALLY needs to know, as well as begin fetching the documents long before he needs to even ask for them in most cases. The question was more of a hypothetical “if I became President and wanted to slack off and read about the Roswell incident (or any number of silly things), is there anything legally barring me?”
There are clearances higher than Top Secret, but they are in themselves classified. I’ve known two people who worked communications at the White House (LBJ & Reagan) who independently informed me of this odd little tid-bit. YMMV
Since this old thread was recently linked (here) in a current thread, I guess it’s fair to raise it from the dead.
Here’s an additional criterion for access: Aside from “Need to Know” (which everybody above seems to understand), there’s also the conceptually distinct criterion of “Need to Handle”. This might apply to people like couriers who must necessarily have custody of a document to carry it from one place to another, even though they have no business knowing what’s in such a document.
Once upon a time, in an alternate universe far far away, I was a computer operator at a major research outfit that did defense work. The scientists produced reams of computer output, both printed and graphic, full of sensitive research data. We computer operators, of which there were several dozen, ran the printers and microfilm recorders, carried reels of mag tape full of data around from the vault to the floor, sorted and filed the outputs, and so forth. Some of that was classified stuff, and we weren’t supposed to look inside beyond the cover page, although nothing physically stopped us. Sometimes the routing information on the cover page was missing or garbled, and we would look inside for clues as to where to file it. But all of that, we did on a “Need to Handle” basis, which was considered decidedly different from a “Need to Know” basis.
What would happen if the President wanted to know the name of an asset in the Kremlin or the Chinese government or whatever? “I’m sorry sir, you do not have a need to know and if you insist on knowing this then I have to resign”?
I suppose the President will just ask the guy’s replacement. I mean, the information is written down somewhere, and legally speaking, the President can just keep firing people until one of them lets him see it.
I believe the top stuff is still called SCI - special compartmented information. You have to have the Top Secret Clearance before getting into the SCI information area. One of those sets is/was, “Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information”; CNWDI. You would get “read into” any information you needed to know to do some work. And it was really limited.
“You can open up this panel, remove connector J15, remove box A in this diagram, put in box B, reattach connector J15, close up the panel”. Along with reams of piddly stuff like torque values, twists in safety wire, sealants to use and other mundane tasks. What was in the old box or new box, what the change was for, and any additional questions might get you dismissed off the maintenance team. You also signed away your first born and future employment on a raft of non-disclosure paperwork before you were read in. No cloak and dagger critical info.
Why would the President “need to know” the exact schematics and the software code for the permissible action link system that arms nuclear weapons?
Why would the President “need to know” the real names and cover identities of every covert agent the United States has world wide, and every person they have as an asset?
I name these 2 examples because I cannot think of a way that the president would need this kind of specific information in order to do this job, and yet this kind of information could be used to inflict grave harm on the country.
I mean, I could see a case come up where he asked to know the name of “who do we have in the Kremlin”, but what possible legitimate purpose would he have for knowing the name of every spy, everywhere?
This reminds me of how Robert Hanssen is said to have had access to a list that named every single agent the United States had in Russia at that time. He gave it to the soviets, who used it to the do the obvious. The question I wondered was under what legitimate purpose should such a list exist at all? There should never be that kind of information all in one place and accessible to a single person.