Security Matters

How To Maintain Your Clearance And Not Get Fired As An Appointee

Word count: 2,145; ten minutes to read.

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If you’re an appointee or become one, and are issued a security clearance, then you MUST understand how to properly handle classified materials, and you MUST take your responsibilities seriously.

Some appointees won’t have clearances, because their jobs don’t require them, but anyone working at White House or elsewhere in a role that deals with national security matters will be required to have one to hold their position.

As an appointee, the easiest way to lose your job, short of getting arrested for criminal activity, is to lose your security clearance.

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While I was in the admin, I personally knew appointees who were fired or put on administrative leave due to actual or suspected security violations.

Two were able to resume work after it was cleared up.

One lost his job and another had his Secret clearance revoked months after the admin ended for a mistake he made while working as an appointee.

From press reports, I know of other appointees who lost their clearances and had to leave the admin, despite being good people who were loyally implementing the president’s agenda.

If you haven’t had a security clearance before, it can be easy to make mistakes.

Several of the people mentioned above were new to government and never had clearances before becoming presidential appointees.

Gaining and maintaining a clearance is important while working inside the admin because it allows you to do the president’s business and advance in your appointee career by taking on positions with more responsibility as time goes on.

But it’s also valuable once an admin ends or you leave it, because having a clearance opens up a range of well-paid government and private sector positions not available to someone without one.

A security clearance signals to those you work with, others outside the admin, and future employers, that your life has been significantly examined and vetted.

This means there doesn’t exist derogatory information about you sufficient to exclude you from holding a position of public trust or corporate responsibility.

If you lose your clearance, it tells people, just like with a past arrest, that you likely did something wrong and may be irresponsible.

Government jobs, or those adjacent to the government, will often ask whether you’ve ever had a clearance or had it suspended or revoked.

Losing your clearance in many cases means you did something criminal, like improperly disclosing, mishandling, or failing to protect classified information, all of which is against the law.

This can put you at legal risk and require you to hire an expensive lawyer (read this newsletter on professional liability insurance to minimize your financial exposure).

If you lose your clearance, there’s about a 99% chance you’re to blame.

But you can avoid losing one and getting yourself in trouble by following the advice in this newsletter