Comment by moron4hire

I think this is a misunderstanding a lot of people have about clearance.

The different clearance levels are not really an indication of different levels of vetting being done to a person. If you can get cleared for Secret, there's no particular reason you couldn't get cleared for TS. It's the same SF-86 form, the same investigation (well, not that I know, exactly. All I know is that it didn't look any different from my perspective), the same interview. There are some differences in how often you'll get re-interviewed, I think. It's not really anything so onerous that you have to ever think about it, really.

The different levels are much more about need to know, which is driven by potential impact of breach. You don't even have to go through the lower levels before you get to the higher ones. The selectiveness of giving people higher clearance levels is more about controlling exposure surface area.

On top of that, clearance level is kind of more about what meetings you'll be allowed in, what conversations you'll be allowed to participate in. SCI is more having ongoing access to data. Then there are additionally "caveats", which are clearances to specific programs. Each of these things are a different axis in the clearance system, not different levels of a linear system.

Contrary to somewhat popular belief, a polygraph is not required to obtain TS/SCI. You can do a polygraph and that's a whole additional designation, "TS/SCI with Poly," as you might see in various job ads.

The fact that these people can't pass TS is extremely telling and extremely concerning. Not being able to pass basically means the investigation revealed information that the person has a reasonable chance of being coerced into providing information. A simple example: maybe you have a mistress you're trying to hide; a foreign intelligence service could try to blackmail you into providing them information. Maybe you have a lot of debt, especially gambling debt; you'd be judged particularly susceptible to taking bribes, which would also set you up to be easily blackmailed.

But I know at least one guy who is a raging pothead who has had high level clearance for the last 20 years. They didn't care because he was open about it. If he was open about it with them, then it was clear it wasn't an issue he could be coerced over. I know people who had past criminal charges on their records. They were fine, too, for the same reason. It used to be you couldn't hold a clearance if you were gay, but nowadays, people are much more open and accepting of it such that it's not a reasonable attack vector for coercion.

Basically, it means you've got major skeletons in your closet and probably tried to lie about them if you can't pass for S or TS. If you can't pass for TS then you probably shouldn't have a position of public trust at all, even for just handling CUI.