Comment by count
14 years ago
Not being the President, this is purely speculation, but I would guess:
There are many things the President probably does not have unfettered access to.
There are many, many, many trainings and shit you go through that reinforce that seniority and superiority do not in themselves constitute the 'need to know' for classified information.
There should NOT be someone who has access to everything, as the entire point of the compartmentalization is that no one breach can be used against everybody/everything. I have a suspicion that there are actually compartments which are mutually exclusive - if you're in Compartment X, you are, by definition, not allowed in Compartment Y, specifically for that segmentation reason.
There exist a number of "super users," I believe their role is to minimize redundancy of effort. Even if someone had access to everything, the amount of data generated far exceeds what one person can handle.
I'd imagine such super users get Name/Codeword/Purpose briefs to cross reference, rather than access to the information itself, as clearance to know is not a need to know.