SECURITY: Not an entitlement

No person has a “right” to a security clearance.

During my military service of four years, seven months and 14 days, I was a member of the U.S. Army Security Agency. At one point, I was assigned to assist in conducting investigations of those possessing and seeking security clearances. My level of clearance was “Top Secret/Special Intelligence/Cryptographic Access.” The day I left active duty, I lost my security clearance because I no longer had a “need to know.”

The assertions of many former government officials that the president is somehow violating their “rights” by dropping their clearances is ridiculous. Many of these officials have left government service and gone on to monetize the fact that they still have security clearances. They become TV and radio commentators and pundits and are more valuable because they have high-level clearances.

Specifically, John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is threatening to sue the president for ordering Brennan’s clearance removed. Brennan will never carry through with this hollow threat because he knows having a security clearance is not a right.

To conflate having a security clearance with the Right to Free Speech is disingenuous, dishonest and dangerous.

Freedom of Speech is a right. Having a security clearance is not.

P.S. Note to the president. Please cancel your plans for a military parade and put that money, estimated as high as $92 million, directly into efforts to clean up the bureaucratic mess at the Veterans Administration. Please.

BILL BROOKS

Coeur d’Alene