# Are there security clearances higher than Top Secret?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-security-clearances-higher-than-top-secret/242049>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 26, 2004, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-security-clearances-higher-than-top-secret/242049 "2004-04-26T06:07:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-security-clearances-higher-than-top-secret/242049/41 "2004-04-27T17:14:53Z")

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> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> Again, codewords like Yankee White, Gamma, Ultra, Keystone, and Canoe (I haven’t heard of that one before) are NOT higher clearances than Top Secret. They are compartments of Top Secret information.

I really need to dig around at home and look in my copies of _Big Secrets_ and _Bigger Secrets_ and re-read this section. Poundstone may have actually written something akin to “more exclusive clearances” rather than “higher clearances”.

Also, IIRC, Poundstone refers to his list of compartmentalized clearances as “in recent use”, which suggests that the clearance names he was passing along were no longer in use even as his books went to press (1983 for _Big Secrets_, 1986 for _Bigger Secrets_). “Canoe” could well date back to the late 70s.

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-security-clearances-higher-than-top-secret/242049/42 "2004-04-27T22:06:27Z")

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> [@KP](#):
>
> I know that Reagan’s briefings before the 1980 election (reagan v. Carter v. Anderson) were widely reported in both the general media at the time, and more recently, on the web. A simple we bsearch should turn up substantial information on what he was told, and his reaction (I did such a search a few years ago for a book I was working on then)

The briefing that Reagan received on the 20/11/80 forms the prologue of Woodward’s (somewhat controversial) _Veil_ (Schuster, 1987).

> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> It may help to review why things are classified at different levels:

The version in Gerald Kaufman’s _How to be a minister_ (1980; Faber, 1997, p28) is rather idiosyncratically British, but worth quoting:

> [@](#):
>
> [The security classification] can range, in ascending order of importance, from Restricted, through Confidential (or Commercially Confidential, if business secrets are involved) to Secret. I believe there is a Top Secret as well, but one of those never came my way. According to my own private system of classification Restricted was the kind of thing no newspaper would bother to publish, Confidential was interesting enough to warrent a couple of paragraphs in the _Daily Mail_, while Secret would rate an insight story in _The Sunday Times_ or one of those _Observer_ probes.

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