Security clearance reform is (understandably) a focus of the Senate today, who has introduced two bills to address both classification and the security clearance process. The Sensible Classification Act and the Classification Reform Act of 2023 were introduced by members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) last month. As Trump’s indictment continues to spike interest (and his presidential polling numbers), several senators have gone on the record with the need to reform and overhaul the security clearance process.
“So my legislation — it’s bipartisan legislation — would change that and force these agencies to justify the number of security clearances, rather than just hand them out like candy,” said Sen. John Cornyn in a Newsmax interview last week discussing his sponsorship of the Sensible Classification Act.
The remarks echo those of other bill sponsors, who have referred to the number of individuals with a security clearance as ‘crazy’ and called on agencies to reduce or justify the number of individuals with a security clearance. The remarks can be bucketed as hyperbole, but they’re already causing some government agencies to launch desk audits and efforts to reduce their clearance population – an effort that actually does nothing to shore up security or address the real problem – which is overclassification and data security.
Reducing the number of individuals with a security clearance actually kicks the legs out of what had been one of the other key security clearance reform efforts – security clearance mobility. The ‘one clearance’ concept has sought to make reciprocity and transfer of trust between agencies more seamless. But as more agencies take a slash and burn strategy to their in-access population, that will ultimately affect an individual’s ability to transfer that clearance or move between positions across different agencies.
To say they are giving out security clearances like candy belittles the experience of applicants into national security positions. Applicants who are required to fill out more than 100 pages of personal data and provide a variety of references, education, and employment information just to be considered, unlike members of congress, who don’t go through a background investigation in order to be eligible to access classified information.
The number of individuals with a security clearance always presents as the low-hanging fruit. But addressing the number without factoring in the make up of the security population (if you want fewer individuals with a security clearance, stop producing so much classified information first).
The narrative calling the national security size crazy or equating the Pentagon to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory actually flies in the face of the Trusted Workforce 2.0 effort to reform the security clearance process not by reducing the number of individuals with a clearance, but by improving vetting for the entire workforce, enrolling the entire suitability population into a Continuous Vetting (CV) solution, and improving the government’s ability to vet personnel and transfer trust between positions.
If congress really think that giving out a security clearance is like passing out candy, I’d encourage them to submit themselves to the process. Maybe if they had to wait 137 days for access to classified information, they wouldn’t be so quick to put the workforce into question.
