It was bad enough when Trump, without prior warning, decided to let the Russian foreign minister and ambassador into the Oval Office, where he gave them highly classified information because it seemed like a good idea to him at the time. And then there were the classified documents he showed off at Mar-a-lago, because what ex-president doesn’t want to be the cool kid to randos?
So, Trumpy excuses aside, it might be said that Trump doesn’t take state secrets seriously, and if it doesn’t seem to be a problem to him, given his deep and broad grasp of government functioning and in-depth understanding the threats facing the nation from countries with adverse interests, why should anyone be concerned that he’s handing over national and personal confidential information without any consideration of who gets to see it?
The Executive Office of the President requires qualified and trusted personnel to execute its mandate on behalf of the American people. There is a backlog created by the Biden Administration in the processing of security clearances of individuals hired to work in the Executive Office of the President. Because of this backlog and the bureaucratic process and broken security clearance process, individuals who have not timely received the appropriate clearances are ineligible for access to the White House complex, infrastructure, and technology and are therefore unable to perform the duties for which they were hired. This is unacceptable.
Therefore, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order:
1. The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months; and
3. The White House Counsel, as my designee, may supplement this list as necessary;
Blaming Biden and some amorphous “broken security process” is not only easy, but facile. It’s Trump’s White House now. But rather than fix what’s “broken” (nothing is broken), just say “screw it” and ask Elon for a list of the wayward youth doing his bidding. Who are they? Who knows? Who cares? Elon says they’re his people and Elon’s rich, so he can’t be wrong.
The information to which these Muskovites sought access ranges from national confidences to personnel information.
Multiple people who identified themselves as representatives of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency were on site at U.S.A.I.D. last week, demanding access to the agency’s financial and personnel records, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the activity and the agency’s inner workings.
The cost-cutting effort led by Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is not a department but rather a task force that nevertheless has been granted unusual power. An executive order signed by President Trump gives its workers unfettered access to government agencies. But in theory, the employees would still need to get proper security clearances to access classified material.
For the unduly credulous, the mere mention of “cost-cutting” is all that’s needed to allow Musk and his wayward children to have unfettered access. After all, who doesn’t want to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, as Inspectors General were created to do before they were purged? So what if they have now been given the keys to the Treasury Department’s payment system so they can cancel any government payment at will to anyone at any time for any reason without any authorization other than Trump’s shrug? You hated bureaucrats given too much authority by a president, but Musk is different?
But does that mean they won’t reveal, or worse, abuse, the classified information they gain? Or serve a foreign government? Or get bought by one with a really sweet memecoin? In the past, the notion was vet first, at the very least. Now, the process is have White House counsel put them on a list and then…they’re good to go.
For those who have some background and experience with either classified information or personal information, this might strike you as outrageously dangerous and reckless. Of course, the president has the authority to declassify information and determine who, and under what conditions, can access it. For the most part, other presidents took this responsibility seriously. Shadow-President Musk, not so much.
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” You hated bureaucrats given too much authority by a president, but Musk is different?”
Nailed it.
Don’t worry! Anyone who has been compromised by a foreign power is sure to be investigated and caught by the FBI…
Wait. What’s that? Firing who? The entire FBI, you say?
Ahem.
It is certain that Musk’s minions lack the knowledge and care to be let anywhere near these systems. There’s a good chance that the technology used is rare, old or unfamiliar. Once they inevitably break something important (even to Trump) who will be there to fix it and take responsibility for the consequences? The Twitter takeover provided ample evidence of Musk’s slapdash approach to software and infrastructure.
They may have made that first bad step by stopping payments to Lutheran Family Services and similar organizations that are, basically, subcontracted by governments to provide various services.
The solution enacted is every bit as ludicrous and harmful as you describe, but by declaring “nothing is broken” in regards to the security clearance approval process makes people stupider, which you frown on.
The process for security approvals has been broken for some time, and in my experience it’s not a partisan issue — everyone knows it’s broken and there have been myriad fixes in the works for over a decade. As is, it is so slow it retards progress on almost every significant effort and devolves into favor-trading to ‘escalate’ clearance requests.
To repeat — Trump’s “solution” is capricious and actively harmful.
Don’t blithely assume there isn’t a problem, simply because Trump says there is.
If you’re dubious, reach out to almost any military contractor about obtaining a CAC (common access card) for a person added to a project. This is the card that simply let’s you into a base and a specified building without an escort.
Then ask random Sergeant involved with technology projects how much time they spend meeting contractors at the gate, driving them in, and escorting them out again at 3 pm.
Trump bad; system is broken
It’s Monday and that’s enough to start me off in a state of confusion but I’ll ask anyway. I recognize the topic is DJT’s disregard for classification protocols. The evidence is Elon the Great’s ongoing siege, encouraged by a shrug of indifference from the King of Kings. They intend to expose and punish all who collaborated with the enemy (I hope I’m not too far off … I’ll re-read this after Monday and check myself!)
This all seems pretty wild. And, separately, I saw where the leaders of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) refused to surrender access to Elon the Great. Last week they told employees not to go to the agency’s office and instead do their work from a secret (but secure) location, starting Monday.
If this war is just getting started, I can’t imagine what’s next. I wonder … is this what voters had in mind when they elected Trump? Either a yes or a no makes my head hurt.
I hate Mondays.
Just place the info they need in a secure location at Mar-a-Lago, say, a bathroom, and they can access it there whenever they need it while they for clearances to get through. Problem solved, right?
In all seriousness, as someone who had to wait 18months for a TS/SCI clearance to come through when I started a job, this is maddening. I had colleagues who never should have slipped through the hiring process get properly caught by the clearance process. It’s slow, but it’s needed. Put your folks at the front of the line, but don’t skip the line.
In a related unrelated note, it’s genuinely a problem that people at USAID will be fired for not allowing access to systems by those without proper clearances. They were required by law to prevent such access. It’s a terrifying development that the President or one of his lackeys is already telling people to violate the law or be fired.
The time to get a clearance is not really that bad. If you are a new guy at a contractor and never had anything before, yea, you are bottom of the barrel. My understanding is that when a new administration comes in, they know they need to get people cleared and quick, and they budget for it and have people ready to expedite the applications. When you get to the level they want, it takes some face to face interviews with people you listed on your application. If they are spread all around the place, then it takes longer for everything to get all pulled back together for the final look. I made that mistake once. If the main investigator on your application can make some calls and take a day or two to drive around town and talk to all your people it cam go fast.
It is also much faster than about 5 years ago. They freed up a lot of the face to face interviews on renewals, so now they are not as busy and can focus on new or upgrades.
However as someone else said, they are busy getting rid of the FBI, they are the ones that go out in the field to do the interviews.
Really the hardest thing is the time it takes to fill out the SF85/86 form. It is a royal pain and most likely you are going to have to call family members to get all of their details which are required. For example, how many of you know your selective service number? It doesn’t matter if you are way beyond being called up, you had better filled in the card when you turned 18. Yes there is a way to look it up, but it is just one more thing. Filling out everything for new home loan is easy compared to even the short version of a clearance form. Yes, I’ve done one and helped a family member with the other in the past 2 months.
Have you read “ethicist” Jack Marshall’s post about your post here? Wondering what you think:
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules. I didn’t read it until now, but this is America and he’s allowed to disagree with me. Although, the “nothing is broken” referred to the security clearance process. I thought that was clear, but apparently not to Jack. Oh well.]
Jack is always welcome to come here and speak his mind if he would like to engage with Scott, although he might not get as warm a reception as he does at home.
Thanks for the response. I agree I thought what you meant was very clear. My guess is, his bias got the best of him and instead of fixing his post, he just doubled down. He actually just said if HE wrote that sentence, he would have meant “nothing is broken” to mean “nothing at all” is broken for Elon to fix.
Well, I told him if he wants to write that way, then he would just be confusing his readers. But again, I think he knows that and just wants to misuse what you said to prove his point.