[luckystarmom]

It doesn’t quite work that way.

Access should be denied immediately when you lose a job. However, your clearance is kept active for about 2 years. (I had a top secret clearance, and I can’t rememberhow long I had it it after I quit working).

It used to take about 3 months to get a secret clearance and a tear to get a top secret clearance due to all of the background checks. Keeping clearances active means access can immediately be given when starting a new job.

With that said, the president has executive privilege to strip clearances to whoever he wants.

[ClearCase_guy]

I agree with that. The paperwork can be a burden and can slow things down if you have to start completely from scratch.

That being said, the concept of “need to know” is really important.

Maybe I’m cleared and actively working on a satellite program. If they find me snooping around looking at classified submarine documents, there’s a problem. I don’t “need to know” about subs. I ought to lose my clearance and my job working on satellites. ASAP.

At least in theory, I wouldn’t mind if Brennan “had an active clearance” — but he should be making enquiries and no one should be sharing anything with him. It’s a bad security breach if he’s “just a guy” and he’s doing work as a media analyst and making phone calls asking about our deep undercover CIA guys over China. Not good.

And since he clearly has had conversations without a “need to know”, I think his clearance should definitely be stripped.

[Shethink13]

Access should be denied immediately when you lose a job. However, your clearance is kept active for about 2 years. (I had a top secret clearance, and I can’t rememberhow long I had it it after I quit working).

It used to take about 3 months to get a secret clearance and a tear to get a top secret clearance due to all of the background checks. Keeping clearances active means access can immediately be given when starting a new job.

I really don't care how long it takes for someone to get their clearance back. A lot can happen in a person's life over the course of 2 years. And it's not like there's a dearth of talent in the millions of current government employees with clearance. At the very least, there should be a 6 month re-evaluation or something for someone to keep a clearance for 2 years.