Poser neighbor

[Rastoff]

BTW, someone above who mentioned the different levels left out CONFIDENTIAL. Is it not used anymore?

That's a good question. I don't remember specifically, but I've never seen it. The most common are FOUO(For Official Use Only), Secret and Top Secret. I suppose that Confidential could be used, but I don't remember seeing it. I claim no expertise in this area.

 

[carpriver]

Smoke,

There is a difference between clearance and access. Top Secret is the highest clearance you can have. SCI refers to the access you have. You have to be "read in" to a compartment to have access - you still have a Top Secret clearance. I did some records declassification work for the Air Force and Navy and held a Top Secret clearance with a laundry list of access's - we had to be cleared for darn near anything since you never knew what you would be getting into when you opened the next box of records. Hope this helps.

while in the Air Force I had a Top Secret. I worked on a War Reserve project. my area was aircraft maintance materials and equipment. That was all I knew about. Your in a specific compartment. At the time you didn't want people know your security clearance. You did your job and kept your mouth closed.

 

[Pilgrim]

Jeez, I was in ASA/NSA for 4 years. I was rated TS/Codeword/Crypto (orange badge). There was little need. Most of what I handled was so heavily encrypted I knew nothing about what it meant. Maybe where the info came from was really secret. I was once congratulated on some info I had gathered. Due to the time and area where gathered I had a bit of an inkling what that one was about.
One funny thing, I was naturally debriefed when I got my separation orders. I can't remember any of the codewords that were current at the time, but I can remember some of the old unused codewords.
BTW, someone above who mentioned the different levels left out CONFIDENTIAL. Is it not used anymore?

yup I had the orange plastic badge when I was working in the ASA facility, but went to a green metal badge when I went to NSA.

I actually got to see what the coded stuff looked like in plain English, but to tell you the truth, I didn't want to see it and avoided it whenever I could. 40+ years later about all I can remember is that I had an orange badge for a while and then a green badge. That's all I want to remember.

 

[elm_creek_smith]

Just because someone has a Top Secret Clearance, that doesn't mean they have access to just any Top Secret information . At the Top Secret level, it's all about access.

ECS

 

[WuzzFuzz]

Back a few years, quite a few years!!!! when I was a ***less WAF in the A/F, a T.S. Crypto clearance at the SAC underground at Omaha, was I could read about anything. But it came in so fast, and we had to process it, it didn't mean much to me....

Later in Europe, a lot of what came in was "Confidential"...That was all about the time of the build up in Nam...It was almost in a story, or newspaper form.

Do you realize how long ago it was????? We could still smoke at our station...

Good lord, we were still using that????? (GIVE ME THE NAME OF IT...those wheels you had to turn to the date)...same as the Germans invented...to encrypt the messages to be sent, or decrypted...All I can remember of them now is...five punches on the tape, a space, then five punches, a space...etc.. Used a Kleinshmitd teletypewriter....to type out un-classified stuff...or B/S!!!!!!

I take it you other A/F went to Sheppard AFB to learn????


WuzzFuzz

 

[Old TexMex]

"It was a jet, like an airliner, except with no windows, and all black. None of us knew each other, we'd been picked from different outfits just for that reason. We all got there at night, and right before we got on the plane, the President came out and shook our hands as we went up the boarding steps, it was heavy man...I can't talk about it."

Whatever....pass the peanuts would ya...

 

[Rastoff]

JAt the Top Secret level, it's all about access.

ECS

This is a common misconception about security levels. You have it almost right, but it doesn't matter what your level of clearance is, you never get access unless you have a need to know. Like I said earlier, the different levels are all about how the information is handled not who has access.