The White House press secretary’s statement seemingly came out of nowhere: “Not only is the president looking to take away [former CIA director John] Brennan’s security clearance,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday. “He’s also looking into the clearances of Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Rice, and McCabe.” Those would be, presumably, former FBI director James Comey, former director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.
Sanders was responding to a question at Monday’s briefing about Kentucky senator Rand Paul’s call for Brennan’s security clearance to be revoked by suggesting the Obama appointee is “monetizing” that clearance by “divulging secrets to the mainstream media.” Paul promised he would bring up the idea to President Donald Trump when they met at the White House later on Monday.
According to Sanders, Trump is already in the process of considering revoking those clearances. “The president is exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance because they’ve politicized and, in some cases, monetized their public service and security clearances,” she said. “Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate. And the fact that people with security clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.” Sanders offered no more details about when any decisions might be made.
What’s going on here? Journalists and other Washington insiders responded to Sanders’s revelation with shock, but does it really make sense for former officials who have left government to maintain that clearance?
Eric Edelman, a longtime diplomat who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and as an undersecretary for defense during the George W. Bush administration, tells me in an email that there are “several purposes” for why an ex-official would maintain clearance. “It is sometimes useful to have your [predecessors] have access to classified information,” Edelman said. The extension of security clearances creates continuity between officials and allows past officials to be consulted without violating the law.
This isn’t the first time the issue has come up. Last year, right-wing outlets fixated on reports that Susan Rice had had her security clearance renewed—and that the letter reinstating it had been signed by H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser. At the time, anti-McMaster elements within and without the Trump White House were trying to suggest that the former general was insufficiently loyal to President Trump. But a White House official told me at the time that the reason for Rice’s extension was continuity:
This may or may not be a bad practice, but one thing the official stressed to me was that this security clearance doesn’t give former officials like Rice continued asking privileges for sensitive information.
Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer and Trump critic, offered more on this point Monday:
Former cabinet and senior level people often are allowed to maintain their “eligibility”, not their actual “access”, solely so future administrations can bring them in temporarily to consult on specific matters they had addressed while working for the Government. https://t.co/iWcvzuu8fT
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) July 23, 2018
Another reason Edelman cited for maintaining a security clearance hits a little closer to Rand Paul and the White House’s point that such clearance could be “monetized.” Former government officials who continue doing classified work for the government retain their security clearances, but not even all of that consultancy is compensated. That’s not the kind of work Paul and Sanders are discussing, though, when they talk about John Brennan, who is a paid analyst for NBC News and uses that platform to criticize the Trump administration.
It would be a big deal if Brennan, or any of the people on the White House list, had actually “divulged secrets” to the press based on their security clearance. But that would be a crime whether or not Brennan had an active security clearance. And any security clearances he or the other officials have (Comey and McCabe, apparently, no longer have them) would not allow them to access new or current classified information.
That’s not to say Brennan or any other former official “deserves” to have a security clearance. (James Clapper, for instance, has a lot to answer to for his handling of classified material surrounding the documents obtained from Osama bin Laden’s compound.) And it’s not unheard of in Washington for an official from one party to cancel the classified consultancy of an ex-official from the other party. What was so jarring about Sanders’ remarks on Monday was that the most striking commonality between the six individuals she mentioned seems to be that they are all publicly critical of Trump.
“Maintaining a clearance is a privilege not a right,” says Edelman. “But it ought to be determined by the needs of the government institutionally and questions of personal reliability (which is why we have periodic security updates) not whether or not one toes the line and criticizes the president.”
