I may be wrong, but I thought EVERYBODY in the military had at least a “secret” clearence and if they didnt they were getting “outprocessed” and was painting the Orderly room for a couple of months. Maybe moving rocks around or cutting grass too.
It is job-elated as written above. Anyone who must handle sensitive infomation or codes must have a clearance. If you will never need to load a code into a radio as an infantryman, then you don’t need and don’t get a clearance. If you are in communications (Signal Corps in the Army), everyone has at least a Secret and all the officers likely has a TS. If you are in a Signal Battalion, but you are a cook, you still don’t need a clearance. So, you could have a sergeant (E5) who is a cook who doesn’t have a cleance, but a private (E2) who works in the COMSEC vault would have a TS.
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*Originally posted by mikemartin273 *
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I’ve never seen that in print! Good to know, tho!
Tripler
It may take me awhile to figure it out, but me and someone else will turn the keys if we have to! 
I skimmed through the replys pretty quickly, but it seems there is one thing that hasn’t been said yet. Not every agency will recognize the clearance of other agencies. I got a secret clearance from the DIA when I worked at the Pentagon. When I started working at the Social Security Administration headquarters, I had to go through the process all over again. (Then again, maybe that’s just a way to harass contractors.)
In my experience, secret clearances are straightforward, though the time to get one takes anywhere from 60 days to about ten months, depending on the complexity of your past. If you’ve got things that they worry about, such as continuing contacts with foreign nationals, bankruptcy or alcohol problems, you can still get a clearance as long as you tell them everything they ask. The things they seem to be looking for seem to be:
“Can this person be blackmailed for anything?”
“Is this person likely to get himself into situations where he/she might compromise something?”
(From my acquaintances), admitted alcoholics, past drug users, etc. can get clearances; they just have to be open about it. Same with psychological/psychiatric care.
As has been mentioned above, by the time you’re getting a top secret or compartmentalized clearance, it’s because someone specifically wants you to get that clearance; if there’s a problem, they’ll write a “letter of compelling need,” which puts you on a faster track.
Companies pay for clearances, not the employees, and I’ve heard numbers in the $25K-$30K range. This occasionally results in strange, Catch-22 situations where you have to apply for a clearance before they tell you what you’re applying for, and by the time you’re briefed, they’ve spent too much money and/or schedule time for you to feel good about refusing.
From anecdotal tales, the process seemed to get a little slower during the Wen Ho Lee situation; I’m not sure if it’s speeded up again.