Classified Clearances

 

With all the news on the recent search of #45’s home at Mar-a-Lago and the boxes of documents classified as Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information, I have been recalling my years as an Air Force Intelligence Officer during the Vietnam conflict and the Top Secret SCI clearance that I had. We simply called it a coded clearance and it required a serious background investigation even though I already had a top secret clearance when I arrived at Clark Air Base as a recent graduate of the nine-month Intelligence School at Lowry AFB (now closed). I worked in a secure facility … 12 hour shift work, 3 shifts on and 4 days off … not so bad … lots of time to get into trouble which I managed to do … not on purpose, though. I read many highly classified texts … my job was to summarize and synthesize what I read during my shift to pass along to the high ranking officers the next day. Most or the time it was just the number of people killed although I read about John McCain’s capture and detention in North Vietnam during my tenure. I vaguely recall there being levels of TS SCI clearance and I think mine was at the third level – relatively low level … there were many more levels … at least eight, I believe … probably more than that. In addition, I learned that one could not share TS SCI information even with someone with the appropriate clearance if that person did not have a clear need to know. I even originated a rare few of those highly classified documents. I detested the war and hated my job but it was better than dropping bombs on people.

At one point, I hosted an Air Force Captain – he became a Major while there - who was headed to Hong Kong to co-lead a highly classified intelligence monitoring operation along with a British officer. He had to await his TS SCI clearance which took months to get. We became friends and on one of my breaks I decided to visit him in Hong Kong. He even took me to that classified facility in the New Territories on a mountain ridge and introduced me to the British co-commander and his wife. I learned that one task at that facility was monitoring all of the air traffic in that part of the world … from southern China down to Indonesia and east and west likewise. The system was not yet perfected so that transmission of information was not yet automated but was being tested with hand developed messages that were not timely. When back at Clark Air Base I was on my third day of duty on a swing shift (4 pm to midnight) with a fresh second lieutenant coming on duty after me. He had not been briefed on the Hong Kong facility (that was not my job) and got one of those dummy messages and believing it to be serious sent it to PACAF HQ as if it was the real thing ... classified as a war message… it reported unusual air traffic conditions in Indonesia and PACAF HQ thought it was real and timely and called him that night and told him to retransmit it to the Pentagon … as a level 8 message which I could not have read even if I wanted to … but I was off to Bagio on my days off. That was the beginning of my troubles. When I came back to work, The Colonel called me in and read me the riot act as if I was responsible. The Colonel was fired that same day for incompetence and I was blamed for that as well, although I had nothing to do with the matter. That was when the powers that remained at CLARK AB decided to punish me and send me to Thailand to be in charge of a group of enlisted misfits who had to build a fence around Ubon Air Base.

Well, the end of the story was that Al Gore senior eventually came to my rescue and I came back to Clark AB three months later to be with my wife and newborn son who just three months old … born just before I was sent to Thailand. So much for my TS SCI clearance. I did manage to escape the Air Force with an honorable discharge.