We were watching Fraiser. He likes to laugh at the characters who he describes as ridiculous. He says that they act sooo smart but that gets them into trouble. That morphed into a political comments. He essentially correlates logical thought out ideas with depth as intellectual, especially if the thought is one he did not come up with. No comments disagreeing, bringing up alternate ideas, or even agreeing with his idea with synonyms and a less than bubbly tone are acceptable and will result in huffy ignoring or leaving the room. It's a combination of increased grumpiness with aging, stubborn/never wrong attitude, self created political echo chamber, becoming a little hard of hearing which results in lot of misunderstandings, and a long history of an unaddressed mood disorder that isn't a mood disorder, he's just like that, really! You know some of those nuts comments you read online and think people are trolling? I am afraid to get into an actual discussion with him because I really do not want to know how deep this runs. @Kampf Trinker to be honest, not sure. I try to avoid political topics because he gets ugly and nasty. But simple mundane things gets him REALLY cranked up.
Saw these for sale. California. I mean I don’t disagree with it, but that kinda stuff would get your shop boycotted and on the news in Texas. And a pro-trump display would also get you on the news, and people would vandalize the shit outta it the next day.
So former CIA director John Brennan sent this tweet yesterday, and then today the White House revoked his security clearance. The Press Secretary further listed a number of names also being considered for revocation, each and every one of whom has been a political target of the administration (James Comey, James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Susan Rice, Lisa Page, Sally Yates, Peter Strozk, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr).
All of it is egregious, but the inclusion of Yates is especially bad. She was acting AG for like three weeks during which time she committed such cardinal sins as: Warning the President that the National Security Advisor had lied about communications with Russia, a crime for which he later plead guilty. Refused to defend an executive order she believed to be unconstitutional. Said order was later blocked by multiple federal courts and was revoked and revised by the White House in order to pass constitutional muster. She is on the list because she was right when the White House was wrong, and it made the President deservedly look bad.
To put that into context... that list includes two CIA directors, Two FBI directors, a National Security Advisor, the Director of National Intelligence, and a former Attorney General. Gee... I wonder why they don't want them to have any more access?
It also means that they can no longer have conversations about such material. It cuts them out of information streams.
This isn’t how securirty clearances work. You have to have both the clearance and the need to see the classified information. You can’t just get access because you want to.
In Canada, it totally depends on the information and the classification it's been assigned. When I was in the military we quite often had secret briefings and discussions that were not at all "need to know". It was kind of like talking about corporate clients with another employee... you weren't on the project, but you could still talk about things relating to the project, but weren't allowed to discuss it outside of the company. (might be a bad analogy, but you get the idea). There absolutely are things that are need to know, top secret, etc, but not everything was like that. If (more like when) I lost my security clearance, there were then things that my old friends weren't allowed to talk to me about, but could have if I still had my clearance. Maybe it's different in the US, I don't know... just going based on my experience. And if that's not the case, then why did they even retain the security clearance after they left? What was it used for?
High level officials like directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc will often maintain clearance so that they may be consulted by their successors for advice or insight into matters that occurred during their tenure. Comey and McCabe, because they were fired, were both already "read out" of their security clearances anyway. Although presumably Trump's actions would block them from having their clearances reinstated should they need them for another purpose (new job, etc).
It's probably different for these above types with high dollar value in consulting and connections, but el hubs had a TS clearance from his time in the military and it lapsed while he was in college. It's impossible to get back unless you have a company sponsoring you directly and you are not generally able to do it independently yourself. So if you're a big name, probably no problem to find someone who will sponsor you. Reinvestigation is generally a more abbreviated process but most companies don't want to do it because the list is way backed up and it takes at least 6mo if not closer to a year for your number to come up for investigation. It costs tens of thousands for the sponsoring company to obtain this credential for you and you can't work with sensitive info during this time. So most of the companies he looked at primarily to get his clearance back were not interested. They would rather hire someone who just EAS'd and had their clearance active. Which basically means people with the same experience but added credential of college degrees and any other certs or experience gained during that time are not seriously considered and I suspect this has some long term effects on quality of work, because these workers, once in the system on the private side, stay in. The pressure to get additional education or certs is off because these positions are lucrative. You just make sure you maintain that clearance.
Interesting... thanks for the explanations. Are there any political areas (buildings, offices, etc) that require a security clearance?
It's always nice when the President openly admits to obstruction of justice on the record with a national newspaper.
Are we talking about the same John Brennan that ordered spying on Democratic Senators to thwart investigations into the CIA’s interrogation methods in 2014? And the same one that lied in intelligence reports about civilians not being killed in drone strikes in 2011? And the same one that Democratic lawmakers suggested Obama should fire because of it? Couldnt be that John Brennan.
This whole thing is such a clusterfuck I can't even watch the news anymore. The country elected someone who is a known crass,narcissistic asshole, what is any of this a surprise?
Let's play the what if game. If Mueller' s clearance was revoked, would that be open and shut obstruction of justice? What are the ramifications for that? Or does it rely on Congress acting?