As I understand it, the US president has essentially unfettered access to all matters of security by virtue of his office, and yet a number of his acolytes have fallen by the wayside having not been able to obtain permanent security clearance.
Were he not in his present position, would the Donald himself have been likely to obtain permanent security clearance?
With his Russian ties, he’d have already lost it if he wasn’t where he is. Scary actually, that they tell him anything.
Luckily, he probably doesn’t retain much.
No. A man that lies constantly, has had multiple bankruptcies, cheated on multiple spouses, committed fraud, commits sexual assault, broke the embargo with Cuba, has paid off porn stars to keep quiet, has a history of working with organized crime, etc would have zero chance of getting a clearance let alone a TS/SCI. He checks practically every box when it comes to reasons not to give someone a clearance.
Leaving my politics and disdain for him out of this, I agree that there is no chance that he would get a security clearance. Forget the affairs and concerns about his veracity: his financial commitments alone would certainly be enough to zap his application (to say nothing of his stated intention of keeping his finances as opaque as possible).
Setting aside the dubious foreign contacts, lack of financial disclosure, and conflict of interest, and past associations with porn stars and pedophiles that could be used to compromise him personally, he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in a furnace of passing the polygraph test. It’s not just that he lies almost constantly, but that he is such a terrible compulsive liar who has tells so bad that he would lose a game of Go Fish to four year old. The machine would be jiggling off the chart before they even got around to asking him seropious questions. And whether you think polygraphs are reliable or not, passing a poly test is a requirement for Top Secret clearance or higher.
Stranger
If the machine is jiggling off the charts before you even get to the good stuff, then you pass. They use that as a baseline to compare the interesting questions to.
Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. The way it really works is that the guy operating the machine has a hunch as to whether you’re honest or not, and that hunch is what determines whether the jiggles the machine makes are significant or not.
No, if the operator can’t get a baseline true positive reading, the test is inconclusive. This is why operators will periodically ask check questions, or repeat a slight variation of the same question to verify responses. And if the poly is inconclusive, they run another poly until they either get a reliable true positive or they decide that the subject will not pass polygraph testing and is rejected.
There used to be the (probably urban legand) claim that you could defeat a polygraph by putting a tack in your shoe and the pain would futz with the readings sufficient to get a pass, but this has been demonstrated is not true. I’ve been through (and passed) enough polygraph tests to be aware of the procedure, and while it is debatable that polygraphs can actually determine a true negative (lying) response with great reliability compared to false positives, if you can’t establish a reasonable baseline true positive then the test will be invalid. And Trump lies so pervasively I don’t think he’d even be able to answer true questions honestly.
Stranger
He just passes it to his handler.
I think Trump could pass a polygraph by using the Costanza technique. Remember, Jerry, it isn’t a lie if you believe it is true.
And unfortunately, that isn’t even hyperbole. At the very least, Trump was patently careless with highly classified material about active intelligence sources in an ongoing conflict in a way that would get any civil servent or contractor fired, security clearance permanently revoked, and likely spur a joint FBI-DSS investigation. Careers have been ended for less.
Stranger
Not true. You can get a TS or TS/SCI with just an SSBI. Lots of TS positions require a poly, but not all, and u would expect a minority actually do.
That has not been my experience.
Stranger
I believe the same is true for Congress , when they are elected they get clearances by virtue of holding their office. I don’t know what level they get and it may only apply to members on certain committees that work with the CIA, NSA, etc.
Your experience isn’t universal then.
I agree with Snarky_Kong (former Navy boomer officer, TS+, no poly).
That has been my experience. Overwhelmingly, the Soldiers I worked with who had TS or TS/SCI clearances granted did not have a polygraph performed. It happening was relatively rare.
ISTR some parts of the government make it a job-specific requirement in addition to the minimum legal and regulatory standards for being issued a clearance. I also recall it being used in some cases where the investigation still leaves potential issues that need to be resolved. That doesn’t make it part of the baseline legal or regulatory requirements though.
I’d expect that any Congressman would need a Secret clearance. I needed it, and I was just a lowly middie.
sort of related , I had 2 guys I worked with need a government background check to work on a contract. The woman who talked to me about them asked all her questions from memory and it took 20 minutes. She had no notes with the questions. She wrote down all the answers on a legal pad. I guess she had asked the same questions so many times she had them memorized.