To truly understand the importance and shock value of the most recent crisis/scandal/fake news to come out of the White House, regarding Rob Porter and his alleged security clearance, you really need to talk to someone who once worked in the White House and held a very high-level security clearance.

Hi there.

As a career military officer involved with lots of secret stuff, I held a series of high level security clearances. Starting off my career as a “finger on the button” missile launch officer up the road in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I was investigated for a TS-ESI clearance, which stands for Top Secret, Extremely Sensitive Information. It was, at the time and likely still is, the second highest category of Top Secret.

As a new second lieutenant, the Air Force initiated a background investigation on me. Such investigations all start with the same SF-86 form. This form is exhaustive and exhausting. And you better tell the truth on that form, period. After the form is sent in, the investigators begin to check you out. They check law enforcement records looking for anything from a parking tickets up to, well, things you could be blackmailed for, like, I dunno, spousal abuse.  They talk to your neighbors and previous bosses. And all this takes time. My ESI clearance took about 4 months to complete.

But to work at the White House in a sensitive position, you must have an even higher clearance than ESI, and that is TS-SCI, which stands for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information. And, before you call the FBI, everything I’m telling you is available from public sources. So, we’re cool.

TS-SCI is a remarkable clearance, and I needed it for the summer break assignments at the White House I got in the late 1990s while teaching at the Air Force Academy. An SCI clearance allows the holder to see information, but only in particular compartments that are further subdivided. And that’s as far as I’m going to explain, because, you know, secret stuff.

The SCI investigation makes the ESI background check look like baby steps. The SCI is very, very deep and complex. For example, one neighbor whom I lived next to in grad school years before, reported an agent came to ask about me. The final question was, “can you think of anyone who really dislikes Bidlack that we could talk to?” Hmm…

And how long did this very complex task take the investigators to complete?  In my case, three weeks. You see, my White House assignment to the National Security Council staff popped up quickly, and they had to work very quickly to get it done before I arrived. Which they did. Easily.

Which brings me to Rob Porter and the most recent dishonesty/alternative facts from the West Wing. Mr. Porter had access, as the Staff Secretary, to the most secret things there are. Since the President has what might be called an unlimited clearance, the person who funnels documents into and out of the Oval Office must also have such access.

We know now that Mr. Porter never passed a full SCI background check (or it was ongoing, or it was stuck in a minor White House office, or, well, you get the idea). He was operating on an “interim clearance” which the President can, in fact, authorize.

And it is here that we start to call shenanigans on Mr. Trump and his team. Remember how I told you it took three weeks to do my TS-SCI clearance? Mr. Porter was far higher in the food chain than I was, yet his took over a year? That just doesn’t ring true, especially when the FBI Director testified under oath that his agency sent over the report last July. Someone is fibbing.

When I was at the NSC, I got to read the President’s Daily Brief (a day after POTUS), and let me tell you, it is full of amazing stuff. We have heard that Mr. Trump doesn’t care to read it and gets briefed orally a couple of times a week, but regardless, that means that Mr. Porter had access to the PDB with his interim clearance. And he appears to beat his wives. And he appears to be blackmailable. You do see the problem here, right?

Holding a TS-SCI clearance is a heady and important thing. The current Administration seems to think our nation’s most closely held secrets are not worth protecting from some people who shouldn’t see them. Remember Mr. Trump’s promise to only hire the “best people?” Sigh… Don’t get me started on Mr. Kushner.