Message posted by Rocketfox on June 24, 2004 at 18:37:40 PST:

I wanted to see the direction this took before I stuck my oar in the water.

Historically, the President is cleared for everything in the general sense, however there are limitations in the specific sense.

For example, when Harry Truman was Vice-President he was *not* briefed into The Manhattan Project until he became President and it was necessary. Up to that point he had no clue.

This is called "need to know"

NOw, in the operational world, the President as Commander-in-Chief and keeper of the Nuclear keys has the "need to know" for nearly everything, at least in general.
With a lot of poperations that's al he gets, the general outlines.

In Intelligence, for example the identies of agents are rigrously protected, and the specifics are not released unless there's an overwhelmingly good reason.

That does not happen often, either.

So, to bring it home for example, the President may have been briefed on the SR-71, for example, but the exact details might not have been relayed to him. He might have been told " we have a very fast aircraft that trales very good pictures over the Soviet Union and it's nearyl impossible for it to be shot down or caught", that sort of thing. He might not ever see the insides of one or see the actual working electronics sections unless there was a really demonstratible need for him to do so.

There's the matter of compartmentalised information to cinsider, where methods and sources are "classified" the wise president does not need to know where the info comes from which is why it's "sanitised", to protect the sources ant methods.

See?

Now, as far as politicians and clearences go, everyone who is elected to be President has to be cleared. Part of this process is classified as you might expect, but part of it is public as well. if there's any skeletons in the presidential closet, they will come out in some fashion well before the elections, in some way, as part of the weeding out process.

After all it does not take a lot to sink a political candidate if one really needs to in the press, right?

not that that's been done that I know of, but you might remember Ed Muskie and the reaction to his medical condition...

Hope this helps, and thanks for your time...

Keep up the good work Y'all, it's one of the high points of my day..

In Reply to: Re: Presidential Security Clearance Question posted by Wayne on June 24, 2004 at 8:23:25 PST:

Replies:

• Re: Presidential Clearances. Larry 06/25/2004, 8:45:12 PST (0)