When I got mine dogs years ago there was a ton of paperwork, interviews, etc. It is unimaginabke to me that some current members of congress could pass such scrutiny. Do senators and representatives automatically have clearences given them? If so, at what level?
Members of Congress do, in fact, get security clearance (of some level) automatically granted to them by dint of their office.
Also, from Wikipedia:
Whether they have government checked clearances, or like congresscritters are exempt from scrutiny, I presume it is still a federal crime for anyone to knowingly disseminate classified information to someone unless they know the recipient has the necessary security clearance?
So Bob finds out about alien UFO’s in Area 41, can’t tell his aide Sally unless he knows she has a clearance?
But Bob can tell George, who is also a member of Congress and thus immune from security clearance issues (automatically allowed security information)?
But then George is bound by the same rules?
Or can Bob not tell George without violating National Security laws because George isn’t a member of the Intelligence committee?
This is a symptom of how the political system is immune to the bureaucracy and its rules, the way that every other participant in government is not.
As a point of clarification, there is no such thing as a “Federal Security Clearance”; the departments of Defense, Energy, State, Justice, and the intelligence agencies all maintain and issue separate clearances at levels corresponding to SECRET and TOP SECRET, plus information-specific clearances by program (Special Access Programs, Secure Compartmentalized Information). In general, if you have one of these clearances you may be approved to be ‘read in’ to other programs at the same level in a different department or agency. However, just because you have a clearance doesn’t mean that you just have full access to all information at that level, and then general qualifier of “need to know” applies to any program access, i.e. if you aren’t working on or require oversight of that program you do not need to know about it. Every program will (or at least should) have a Security Classification Guide (SCG) which describes the need-to-know criteria, marking requirements, special handling and storage provisions, identifying the classifying authority, et cetera.
As noted, members of Congress are not required to hold security clearances and most of them do not unless they come from a military or government program background and even then they would require a sponsor to keep their clearance ‘active’. This permissiveness does not cover staffers, nor to my knowledge are any Congressional offices equipped for the storage of classified materials and are certainly not Secure Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF), so unless the staffers hold a clearance by being military reserve or have a need to be read into a specific classified program in support of their Congressperson they won’t have active clearances, either.
Congress has been a source of many intelligence leaks (by both parties, often to political advantage) to the point that the intelligence community is often reticent to brief the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on active programs where operational security is paramount, which is obviously problematic in terms of legislative oversight but given the long term nature of many intelligence operations and the political nature of committee assignments it is difficult to restrict oversight to a select group of trustworthy individuals. The complement to that is that intelligence agencies and ‘black’ Department of Defense procurement programs often want to minimize oversight for programs that are of questionable legality or value and will use the need-to-know criteria to minimize legislative oversight to the extent possible.
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So… my question was … the laws regarding not revealing classified information still apply if the person is not specifically issued a clearance? Bob can learn something because he’s a congress (house, senate) representative, but is still forbidden from passing that on to others who have no clearance / no right to know?
It depends upon the information being revealed. If the release does no specific harm to national security and doesn’t put US interests and operatives at risk there may not be a specific legal action against a person who does not hold a security clearance from revealing that information, but you can be sure that if such a leak is discovered that the person will not be granted access to more secure information. The governing statute is 46 CFR § 503.59 - Safeguarding classified information, and specifically paragraphs p and q.
Whistleblower protections may help shield from legal consequences if the information reveals illegal activities that were concealed but regardless of that status someone holding a security clearance will have it revoked practically by default, e.g. Daniel Ellsberg was never going to hold a clearance after the publication of the Pentagon Papers even though the papers revealed illegal activity and fraud by the Johnson Administration and the case against Ellsberg (and Anthony Russo) was dismissed.
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