Last week, President Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan. Based on the reaction of Brennan and the media, one would think that Trump had erected a guillotine on the White House lawn.
Brennan served as CIA Director in the Obama administration and has been a constant critic of President Trump. Last July, Brennan tweeted that the President’s press conference in Helsinki, “rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”
Brennan regularly appears as a paid guest analyst on network and cable news shows. He speaks with the authority of someone who has access to insider information that others in news organizations do not have.
Brennan reacted to revocation with defiance and righteous indignation. He called the revocation abnormal, dangerous, suppressing freedom of speech, and punishing critics. He compared the President to foreign tyrants and despots.
Others reacted in a similar fashion. John Kerry referred to the revocation as “banana republic behavior.” Congressman Adam Schiff went as far as to say that the President’s decision was unlawful.
These loud protests are based on the faulty premise that the revocation is the suppression of their freedom of speech. Mr. Brennan and his fellow supporters need to consider the irony of saying that the President is suppressing their free speech.
They are all freely communicating their positions on the matter through numerous means of social media, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, open letters, statements from the halls of congress, and any other means that they choose. Those media outlets are widely dispersing those opinions. I don’t see any censorship, redacting, or other suppression of anyone’s right to free speech.
The obvious question to ask is why these people should continue to have access to our nation’s secrets when they are no longer in an official government role. Why are they so indignant and outraged over losing access to information that is frankly no longer their business?
They do not have a need to know and one wonders why they would even want to know. If they are needed for ongoing consultation, that should be addressed on a case by case basis.
The real problem here is that everything got turned upside down. Somewhere along the line, the security clearance became a lifetime entitlement tied to the individual rather than tied to the actual mission and need to know.
A security clearance is not an entitlement. The President does not have to give a reason for revoking the clearance of someone who no longer holds a government position and therefore has no need to know. It is the other way around.
If there is a need for a former employee to maintain a clearance, then it is up to the current administration to determine if there is justification to maintain the clearance for the mission need. If the mission does not require a need to know, then the clearance becomes inactive the day the individual leaves the government role that required the clearance in the first place.
This is common sense that the average American understands. When you leave a job, you turn in your keys and your access cards, your e-mail account is inactivated, and you are removed from any other access that you had.
You can’t log on to check the company bank account just to see how it is doing. If you come back to the office for some reason, you get a visitor badge and, in some cases, may even need an escort to go to certain areas.
Only in Washington can there be such a firestorm over what should be a routine action. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Mr. Brennan doth protest too much, methinks.”
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