I was on a project once, worked up some data on some circuits, filed it away. When I came in the next day I was unable to access my files. They had changed the level of classification, and I was no longer cleared for the data I had produced!
Only for a couple of hours on a project site visit, but was able to go all the way inside the mountain. The most surreal thing about the whole experience was rounding a corner in the tunnel and finding…a gift shop! Don’t worry folks: the place isn’t a secret, nor is its location. It’s the refuge for government officials in the event of nuke-you-lar attack. I would suspect that some of the things inside are, however, quite sensitive, but I never saw them.
I once held a security clearance, when I was in the Army. Not such a big deal.
We had a song about it, for the time when we’d be released from the service.
Please debrief me, let me go
For I don’t have “the need to know”.
Take this badge away from me,
Debrief me, and let me live again.
I’m in the middle of filling out forms on the hopes that I’ll need a security clearance, and I’m running into that. They don’t care about day trips to out of the country, but they do care about anything longer.
I live exactly far enough away (2, 2 and half hours) that day trips are a bit hard to do. But it’s easy to say “I don’t have anything to do this weekend. I know, I’ll go to Vancouver (or Victoria, or the islands).” Go up Friday night, come back Sunday, everything works perfectly.
I’m now trying to remember when these trips happened. In most cases, I can narrow it down to a specific season, but there are a couple of memories that I can’t place at all.
I had security clearances when I worked for the IRS and FDIC. For FDIC I had to account for every place I’d ever lived and worked and account for any time when I wasn’t working and list not only my immediate family, but aunts and uncles and grandparents. And have a number of personal and family references. I worked for the government after I was divorced and in my 30’s and it’s a good thing I had to do it then because I would never, ever remember it all now. I had lots of jobs and lots of moves (I left home at 18 and my ex was in the miltary). My ex had to have a top secret so agents would be questioning the neighboors and once they even came to the house and asked me questions. This had to be done every so often, but I don’t remember the intervals. When I worked for IRS they audited my last three years returns in addition; I worked for them for several months before this was all completed. That’s what happened with the TSA when they hired all those security people so fast; they had to fire those who turned out to be convicted felons 6 months later.
Have one, or so you might have been led to assume. Can’t really talk about it unless you take the red pill. -nuff said-
Oh, and has anyone mentioned how much fun it is if you’ve lived outside the country for extended periods of time? I lived in Germany, Belgium and Ireland when I was between 16 and 22 as a student of various types, and they had a field day with that. Largely because I travelled as much as I did, including to Russia. I shudder to think what I would have to do now, having gone to places like India, Egypt, Malaysia, Thailand, and having lived in Sri Lanka for two years.
My first year here, I roomed with a colleague who was a Mormon. Like all male Mormons, he had been required to do a two-year mission abroad. His had been in Japan, and they really put him through the wringer.
What drove them crazy about me was that I had worked my way through school as a musician, and claimed (truthfully) during my polygraph that I’d never smoked grass. They spent an hour trying to get me to change my story.
I also saw the investigator’s eyes light up when I told him I’d never registered for the draft (I was born in 1959, too early for the reinstituted registration, which only covered people born in 1960 and later. And I was just too young to register under the old system --I had called the Army recruiter a month before I turned 18, who informed me compulsory registration had recently ended). It almost broke my heart to explain this to the investigator.
My Dad held Q Clearance. When he was first checked, it took 6 months before they cleared and hired him. It was apparently pissing a lot of folks off that no matter how hard they pushed, no information could be given to the Gummint that detailed his life before the age of 8.
Cause, the Nazis burned it all up and there was no getting around that. :rolleyes: Nonetheless, they pushed a lot- as though somehow WWII didn’t jive and dammit they wanted to know everyone who had known him back to birth.
The phones were tapped the entire time they were doing the initial background check. Clicking, dropped calls, echo;ing, etc. ( This was the early 1970’s…). It was easy to know when they were redoing his clearance- our phone service would suck for a few weeks, every 5 years or so.
He was allowed to talk at dinnertime about…the stuff he was allowed to talk about. He took it very seriously and there was no hinting or joking. Most of his days were okay to discuss, but now and again something would come up and he’d just tell us to let it go.
-shrug- Aside from his direct involvement in the Three Mile Island response and aftermath, his job was pretty much day to day mundane and yet very important- like a lot of Gummint jobs. Not flashy, but rather important to have done.
As for discretion, hoy boy lemme just tell ya. Sitting with FCM at dinner gives the word a whole new meaning. I ask a simple question like, " So, how was work today?" and she responds with "NO TELL ME HOW YOUR DAY WAS CARTOONIVERSE !!! "… 
Cartooniverse
I hate that paperwork. The job I had prior to joining the Army I needed to get a clearance. We had already been working there for a year, but requirments changed. They gave us this CD with the software on it. Told us to run the software, fill out the information, and save it to a floppy. The boss collected all the floppies, and mailed them out. About two weeks later, we got told that the electronic format they gave us wasn’t approved yet, and we had to do hard copy forms. So they give them to us, and we fill em out again. Glad I kept all the information from the first attempt. Well I made a big mistake on one page, and had all the infomation shifted one line down. Had to redo the entire thing because we couldn’t seperate the pages. For those that are counting thats 3 times. After a couple more weeks we got told that they sent us the wrong form, and that the form we filled out was for Federal employees only, and we needed to fill out another type of form. Filled that one out. Worked there for a year and never heard another thing about the clearance. Decided to join the Army, and was given the forms to fill out for my clearance. Looked familiar. Took em home, and dug through my old paperwork, and found the form that I had screwed up before, and copied the data. Thank Og I still had that.
The job I had the clearance for as the contractor was as a goverment contractor. When they called to do the background checkes for a co-worker they called to verify empolyment on a Friday. Boss was out that day. They called back on Sat. Closed. Then called again on Monday. Federal holiday. They returned the forms saying she failed because they couldn’t verify employment.
Also my dad tells a story about when he was getting his clearnce redone. The Air Force went around asking about him in his home town. They asked a friend of the familly if my dad ever talked about his job. She is one who likes to throw people for a loop, and give smart ass answers. She said he is always talking about his job. The two guys passed a look like they were thinking “got him” Then she said, “He says he is the best fighter piolt the Air Force has ever had” He worked commo.
The paperwork is a pain, but it gives you so many more options when looking for a job.
-Otanx
I went through the rigamarole of getting a Secret clearance (which I think is the lowest rung of security clearances) many years back when there was a chance of picking up some consulting income working for a beltway bandit. The most entertaining part of the process was walking into my smalltown police station and saying “I need to be fingerprinted”. They didn’t even bat an eye. The people I worked with had lots of fun making the traditional jokes about what they’d tell the interviewer about my political leanings and sexual preferences (in real life, vanilla and vanilla).
After doing the interview and filling out the form, months went by. The Secret clearance finally went through, long, long after the chance for consulting work vanished.
I beg to differ…
Do you seriously think that having your clearance listed on your badge – which I’m 90% sure you’re not supposed to wear outside of work, so yes it is a secret – is the same thing as coming into this thread and blithely announcing “yeah, I work for X agency and I have a TS/SCI?” :dubious:
Which is the whole point; sometimes you’re not protecting the information itself so much as its accuracy.
Coming from a slightly different perspective, I work for a lawfirm and hold a TS/SCI because of a case I’m involved in. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun at first, but it is more of a burden than anything.
I think you’re generally taking a bit of a hard line against the folks who are sharing (barely) in this thread, but I do happen to strongly agree with your statement that I just quoted. It was hammered into me that I would very likely hear things in the media that I know are classified, but that it is imperative never to confirm or deny the accuracy of that kind of information.
I find it easier to simply avoid any kind of conversation about the work I do so those problems never come up. And thank God my wife appreciates and respects the fact that I can’t talk about what I do. I would honestly hate to be the spouse in that situation, and I love her for putting up with it.
Rest assured, I’ve shared nothing here that isn’t discussed freely at recruitment seminars I’ve given at colleges and trade shows. A person interested in general information about employment with a security clearance is permitted to (and has a need to) know such things.
The stance you appear to be taking – ‘never say anything’ – certainly prevailed during the cold war. But more recently, we’ve had to compete with industry for qualified people (and answer to a public much less trusting of government than during the cold war). This has forced a little more openness.
I held a Secret clearance for most of my military career. I first worked on flight simulators, and because of the weapons, electronic counter-measures, and tactics employed you had to have a clearance just to get into the big, windowless building.
Most of the time we didn’t deal with anything classified, but occasionally we’d have to bring out a red manual for a training exercise. Once, when reviewing some new, unclassified training material, I found an entire chapter basically duplicated from a red manual. Much ado, much ado in the hierarchy about that one. The new training manual was amended so that just that chapter was Secret, and kept in the safe. So you’d get to Chapter 9, and it wouldn’t be there. Very weird.
Much later in my career when I was a hospital corpsman, I was the only one of 35 medical repairmen who had a clearance. I ended up assigned to a special medical reaction force, that deployed infrequently on short notice, basically to support head injuries.
I went overseas with this group in support of Reagan’s trip to Bali, Indonesia in 1986. Felt very odd telling mrs. Danalan that I was going on a trip for two weeks, but I couldn’t tell her where I was going. I think the tropical shirts might have given some part of my destination away, though.
When I was assigned to a submarine tender, my lowly Secret clearance was no big deal – I didn’t even get to respond to emergencies in the <REDACTED> area.
That’s not my stance at all. Why does it have to be all or nothing? What’s so hard to understand about the idea that yeah, obviously sometimes this kind of information is going to come out, but hey maybe it’s not such a great idea to volunteer it on a public message board? Or the idea that if you must admit that you have a clearance, for the love of og there’s really no reason to say “I work for X agency and hold X clearance?”
It’s not rocket science, folks. All I’m calling for is a little thoughtfulness, and I’ve been careful to use qualifiers and words like “in my opinion” the whole time. If you feel chastised, perhaps it’s because part of you knows that I’m right.
[QUOTE=False_God]
Yep, I’ve got one.
TS/SCI and I’ve been codeword in the past.
QUOTE]Same here, in the past. Former USAF cryptologic linquist. TS/SCI codeword. Got to work in the special windowless rooms with all the EM shielding and so forth. More fun’r than nailin’ jello to a tree.
Well, it’s listed on my resume; if it’s a secret, it’s about as much of one as what Bill Clinton did with cigars in the Oval Office. :dubious: My clearance level isn’t any kind of secret, and I’ve never been instructed not to divulge it.
It’s true that we’re not encourage to talk about the details of work, but that is as much an issue of proprietary information/trade secrets and industrial espionage as it is security, and it is as much to defend against litigation as it is to secure a technological advantage against competitors. Several of the big defense contractors have gotten into trouble in the last couple of years for using proprietary information gained as part of a joint effort to outbid the competition on an RFP. It’s true that I can’t comment on classified or higher information, even if it is public knowledge, but that’s also true with FOUO (for official use only) info, even though it is generally accessibly to anyone who needs it regardless of security clearance. On the whole, our physical and information security–with the exception of TS/SAR type programs–isn’t really any more intensive than you’d find at a large commercial manufacturer; indeed, getting into and out of Harley-Davidson was much more difficult than getting out the building in my current job.
Mostly, getting and maintaining a security clearance is just a pain, and in the next job/career I’ll look for something that doesn’t require a clearance. 'Course, even the commercial sector has their moments; remind me to tell you about the “loyalty oath” that Rubbermaid made us sign… :rolleyes:
Stranger
I meant that the fact that it’s on your badge is a secret (technically), since you were using that as an example of why it’s ok to announce to the world your clearance level. I already went through the resume thing with Johnny L.A.
Of course you haven’t. My very first post in this thread said “I know that you can say you have one, but I think the idea is that you shouldn’t say you have one.” I also said “Of course you won’t get tried for treason or anything for admitting to having one, but it just seems a little smarter (IMHO) to avoid volunteering such information,” and that has remained the point I’ve been trying to explain ever since.
Why is the distinction between “can” and “should” so hard for some folks to understand?
Go talk to your security officer: say that there’s a thread on a public message board where someone is curious about the security clearance process, and you want to volunteer that you work for X agency and hold X clearance. Tell me what he/she says, and don’t be surprised when it’s something similar to what I’ve been saying here: there’s no law against it or anything, but maybe it’s not the world’s best idea.
And you know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe people with clearances are encouraged to announce that fact to anyone they come across. But if so, no one has provided any proof of that: all I’ve gotten is “big deal, it’s on my badge, people assume I have one anyway, everything’s available on the internet,” etc. – in other words, excuses and rationalizations. I know that it seems uptight and “uncool” to take things like national security seriously, but someone has to.
Yanno… I gotta go with Misnomer on this one. Somewhere in the last, say, 5 years I did some work for a government agency. Doesn’t matter which one, they’re all over the greater D.C. area. Suffice to say that I was told I didn’t work for them. I’d never been to their facility. I wasn’t allowed to put it on the website, nor on a resume. No photos taken on site could be used for advertising, though they did permit one group photo that showed the agency crest in the background. Their photographer took all images.
I’ve abided by that request, and never named the place in print. -shrug- I don’t have any kind of security clearance at all. I DO have respect for the position those folks are in, and respect for the word I gave to them. Seems to me that those who are discussing their clearances in here are saying just the stuff they are allowed to say, and not saying a whole lot more.
That’s the nature of it. 