The arrogance never ceases to amaze me.
Back there in the late 1980s, I departed the Reagan White House as the Reagan era was ending. I had a security clearance — and I never thought twice about trying to maintain it. Out means out.
Apparently, that is no longer so.
Start with that infamous letter from 51 former intelligence officials in the heat of the 2020 campaign.
The tale is recounted here in an Executive Order signed by President Trump on Jan. 25, 2025. It headlines — in capital letters: “HOLDING FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ACCOUNTABLE FOR ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND IMPROPER DISCLOSURE OF SENSITIVE GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION.”
The EO says in part this, with bold print for emphasis supplied:
Section 1. Purpose. In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.
…The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions. This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country.”
Catch that line? This one: “Multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.”
Stop right there.
It’s time — more than past time — to ask an obvious question. That would be: What on earth are former — say again former — officials in the United States government doing with security clearances of any kind after they have left the government?
The answer is seriously obvious. That answer would be in many cases that these ex-intelligence officials have chosen to parlay their government experience into bucks — big bucks in many cases — by joining some private sector for-profit business that capitalizes on their government experience.
It would, of course, be a serious mistake to limit this pattern only to those leaving intelligence or national security bureaucracies.
Those who served in bureaucracies, non-intelligence related, such as, say, the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Health and Human Services, frequently follow the same pattern. They turn their government experience into big bucks by signing up with some D.C. lobbying firm that targets the policy areas run by those domestic, non-intelligence-related government bureaucracies. It’s what makes The Swamp — The Swamp.
But even if that is seen as the seamy underside of Washington Big Government, it still does not involve receiving security-laden intelligence information that is the purview of serving government officials in the intelligence-related bureaucracies.
The dirty little secret here? There is no earthly reason for ex-government officials to have security clearances once they choose to leave government. Other than, bluntly put, to make big bucks using government secrets to line their pockets.
The obvious question?
Can this corrupt practice be finally stopped? Abolished? Dispatched for good?
Alas, precisely because too many powerful D.C. types benefit from the practice of keeping their security clearances post-government service forever and a day, and sell that fact for big bucks, the answer is most probably no.
Not good.
Not good at all.
