You know what cracks me up? I’ve got a Soldier who needs a security clearance. He’s been in the Company about six months now. After he first got here, we submitted all the required paperwork. He lost his security clearance because of a problem with his recent divorce. His wife didn’t pay bills that were in both their names and his credit suffered for it. Bad credit = difficult security clearance. Unfortunately, his unit didn’t stick up for him and yanked his security clearance essentially for something that wasn’t his fault. We’ve been fighting for six months to get it back with no luck yet. It’s still in “adjudication”. Adjudication could take up to 2 years and because it was revoked, the commander doesn’t have authority to give him an interim one.

So, you see how difficult clearances are to get an maintain. Simple things like credit affect one’s ability to get and keep a clearance. Today, prior to taking questions, White House press secretary Dana Perino briefed on some steps that the Bush administration was taking to get the Obama administration spun up.

“We are providing intelligence briefings to the President-elect and his team,” she told the White House press corps. “We’re giving security clearances to members of his transition staff.”

Can they “give security clearances” to those of us that need them too?! I’m interested what types of background investigations are conducted on members of Presidential staffs and officials. After all, look at these stats for our Congressmen and women:

36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
3 have done time for assault
71, Repeat…71, cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits, and
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

To be fair, all these statistics are about 10 years old, but I doubt much has changed, especially considered recent incidents involving people like Stevens in Alaska, Craig’s homosexual tendencies, Kennedy’s drinking and driving, McKinney’s violent tendencies, etc. Yes, individuals at the absolute highest levels of government are “given” security clearances just because someone wants to work with them. Does our national security mean anything? And we wonder why there are so many leaks of classified information coming from Congress, the White House (though technically the President doesn’t “leak” classified information since he is the owner of it), and various department heads. Meanwhile, I have a Soldier who deserves to have his clearance reinstated and who knows how long it’ll take for the investigation to be complete.