The combination of my crow and my fish made it fairly obvious to anyone who saw me in uniform that I had, or had at some time had, a TS clearance.
Ditto. In my experience, most of the really interesting stuff was Secret - TS material tended to be quite boring.
When I left one job, I was told the only thing I could put on my resume to explain that period of employment was: “Position required TS/SCI” and nothing else.
When I went back to work for them some years later, and then retired, they’d loosened things a bit and we would submit our resumes to security to be scrubbed. I was quite surprised how much they allowed. It’s been almost 5 years since I’ve had classified access.
Dude…it’s not a secret. 
I had TS 25 years ago for a federal contracting job. Mostly so I could walk around the State Dept and not require an escort. Nothing special.
What most people don’t really realize is how non-special Top Secret is in Washington DC. There must be tens of thousands or more with that level of clearance running around.
I have not but various relatives had. It went with the rank and positions they held in the military.
Only another Navy guy would know what you mean by “my crow and my fish”. 
I never had a top secret clearance but I did have a lesser one as an employee of a small government contractor over twenty years ago. I think I saw a classified document once. And our offices used to get regular inspections from the Defense Investigative Agency rep. He would hang out at our office; I got the impression that he was bored. (This was in Westchester County, New York, so I doubt it was a hotbed of espionage. It’s not really a hotbed of anything, really.) So I’d ask him to tell me espionage stories. He told one about the Americans who traveled to France for a commercial negotiation and were surprised to find the people they were negotiating with had copies of the notes the Americans brought. The DIA agent said that some governments practice industrial espionage on behalf of their private companies.
And we were given wallet cards listing a bunch of three-digit alphanumeric codes. These were the prefixes for certain diplomatic license places that were restricted to a tight radius around the United Nations headquarters. The idea was that if we spotted one of these license plates up in Westchester County, someone had traveled outside the area in which they were expected to remain and we should report this sort of thing. Too bad I threw out that card eventually.
Just going to point out that there is also a ‘Secret’ level of clearance. Almost as much paperwork as TS, but the feds don’t interview your second grade teacher.
Depends on how long ago you were in second grade…
checks pockets
Dammit! I left my Secret clearance in my other pants pocket!
Do those things hold up in the wash? (I sure hope so…)
There are a lot of misconceptions about clearances, as most of you already know. It only allows you access to what someone else decides you should have access to. When I was fairly new to the whole thing, I was part of a team that was upgrading security throughout our building, which housed a number of different agencies/departments/offices. I went to one door and knocked, and someone opened the small door inset into the larger entry door and said “Yes?” I told him what I was there for and he said “No” and shut the door.
Somewhat flummoxed, I knocked again, told him who I worked for and told him that I had a TS clearance. He just smirked and said “Don’t knock here again.” When I somewhat indignantly told my boss about it, he said “Oh yeah. . .those guys. Forget about it.” It was Delta Force people. I found out who they were long after they had moved to some other unknown location.
China is the current prime exemplar, but America used to do it too.
When I was in the USCG reserves around 1991, they told me I needed a “Secret” clearance. Fill out 25 pages of forms, get fingerprinted, get recommendations from two non-relatives who have known you for 25 years. The following year they said I now needed a “Top Secret” clearance and yup, fill out all the forms again. This time they even sent an agent from Coast Guard Intelligence (“contradiction in terms” as the joke goes) to interview me at my civilian job. At the time we had a Russian Jew emigre working as an engineer who had been drafted in the Russian Army. If I was asked for a work reference by this CGI agent, I was going to say in a mock Russian accent “You want character agent? Go to that desk and ask Lt XXXX XXXX of Soviet Red Army. He will give me good character reference”. Unfortunately he didn’t ask, and anyway the engineer was away on vacation, enjoying the blessing of Walt Disney World.
Funny thing was a couple years later I had to sign in to do work in radio room. The RM1 ( or whatever the designation was) argued when with me when I put in the indicated spot that I had a Top Secret clearance. Man was dumber than a BMCM. To appease him I said oops, you're right. You don't want to get involved with crypto nonsense...immense pain if you lose something or violate security measures.When Reagan was president, he was scheduled to pay a visit to the University where I worked at the time. Everyone who had the ability to be in the building that day had to be security vetted before his visit. We had a stack of forms to fill out, and a series of two interviews with FBI personnel. We were never really told what the criteria were for ‘pass’ or ‘fail’, but about 1/3 of the staff didn’t pass the vetting and were told to stay home that day. When we arrived at work the morning of the visit, we were wanded and anything we carried in was searched. I remember thinking at the time that if it was this hard to be allowed to be in the same building with the President for only one day, imagine how hard it would be to get a high level security clearance.
Years later, I did some contract hiring for Lockheed Martin and had to get a low level clearance in order to be on their site and have access to their files. It was formulaic and not hard at all. I don’t know why it should have surprised me that actual clearance was easier to obtain than the Presidential visit vetting had been, but it did.
In any case, I’m perfectly happy not being privy to anything I could be shot for. 
I prefer Victoria’s Secret.
I remove it from my wife on a regular basis.
127 pages now(PDF).
Fortunately much of it can be skipped by most people and employers provide an online version that steps you through the parts that do apply.
But if you’re considering applying somewhere, using this to compile everything you’ll need ahead of time makes things much easier to fill out.
Got one for a job I never took years ago.
Retired and clearance lapsed now. Our career program required a TS and membership in the exclusive Personnel Reliability Program:eek:. At various times I was read into/or briefed regarding SCI stuff and CNWDI (critical nuclear weapon design information). Don’t bother waterboarding me, all the systems I worked were retired 25+ years ago. Most was not exactly James Bond stuff. “Open this compartment that you never were authorized to do before. Remove box labeled A. Replace with box label B. Use all new screws and sealants. Torque blah blah. Record serial numbers etc…” Ask what the boxes did or why you were replacing them was a ticket out of the bay and a stern lecture from your security officer.
Anecdote. During Xmas and New Years breaks, TS messages would come in for various systems when I was at the Missile Command in Huntsville. The big wigs were on vacation/leave and the minions left behind might have only a Secret. I’d get called over to the message center to read the copy and brief the minions on everything that wasn’t TS. For those following along, individual paragraphs had their own classification while the message reflected the highest classification contained. I would get, “Is that all?” a lot. I’d use the, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you :D” line a lot. 99.9% of the stuff was related to locations and movements that happened long ago.
I had a “Q Clearance” when I worked at a Department of Energy nuclear facility. It is essentially the same as top secret.
I now work for the DoD and have a secret clearance.
I once got Secret off the Top shelf of a grocery store for a short woman with a Russian accent.