https://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/08/20/flashback-media-didnt-care-when-obama-scrubbed-security-clearances/Flashback: Media Didn’t Care When Obama Scrubbed Security Clearances
The establishment media did not care when the Obama administration called for the aggressive scrubbing of security clearances back in 2013.
According to our media today, revoking security clearances of those who are no longer in government is the stuff of banana republics, of dictators, and a full-blown assault against the First Amendment.
But when President Obama sought to do the exact same on a massive scale, the media hardly blinked and the news only earned dutiful coverage.
“W.H. Looks to Scrub Clearance List,” was the November 21, 2013, headline at the far-left Politico.
In a directive obtained by POLITICO, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper questioned the booming rolls of security-clearance holders. At last count, more than 4.9 million people held clearances, of whom over 1.4 million were cleared for access at the “Top Secret” level.
“I write to express my concern about threats to national security resulting from the increasing number of people with eligibility for access to classified national security information, particularly Top Secret (TS) and Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information (TS/SCI),” [then Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper wrote in a three-page memo, dated Oct. 31 and cited at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
Clapper asked agencies to perform a top-to-bottom scrub of the teeming rolls of people authorized to access classified information and to remove anyone deemed not to have a so-called need to know.
What’s more, Clapper specified his concern about contractors: “Agencies should debrief all government and contractor personnel who no longer require such access and update the appropriate national security database or repository.”
Obviously, Clapper and the Obama administration singling out contractors would result in job and income losses for all those former G-Men.
So where was the media uproar?