Clearance

[James Shaw]

My CD application took less time because I have had a clearance in the past. I was told this by someone who deals with the apps.

[dwb]

What type of missions though.  This is the question nobody is answering

Because you don't have a clearance. 

Opsec at a level where it really means something. 

Stop asking.

I forgot, he's not a member of the Top Secret Civil Air Patrol.

[wingnut55]

Interesting situation.

1. Parent (USAF)  insists we are US Government Entity during AFAM
2. CAP NHQ insists we are just a nonprofit volunteer group performing missions for the USAF, DOD, DHLS, DEA etc. USAF declares we as Volunteers, are covered as government employee's under FICA.

Volunteers sign a make believe Nondisclosure statement for NHQ CAP.

All other Federal Agency's require most civilian contractors and military members to undergo a real 'SECURITY CLEARENCE". Costs of clearance absorbed by contractor as part of doing business with US Government (really included in contract costs)

USAF gives CAPHQ money for operations as are a contractor to USAF. (as we are according to USAF procurement).

Conclusion:  CAP & CAP-USAF saves big money by not getting background security clearances. Most of costs for personnel (Training, pay, housing, food) is absorbed by members who are Volunteers.

I can say this 90% of what we do does not require a clearance, but 10% of what we do is stuff I in the past had a clearance for (Active duty and as a contractor). I see this as a failure in the system, this will bite us in the butt someday.

[Short Field]

Must have been over-classified.   

Clearances are awarded based on the job the person is performing, their need for access to information at that particular level, and the type of security investigation the person has already undergone.   FOUO is unclassified information.  I am sure if there are people in CAP who need addition access, they have been given the appropriate clearance.  I am also sure they are not discussing it on CAPTALK.

[DNall]

I don't see what future mission that could be needful of a clearence.  I was leary to give my info but then again all I know with my clearence is the air volocity of a european and african swallow

What info? It's the level of your clearance & the investigation close date as near as you know it. It gets verified by an E-7 over there & we drive on. That doesn't effect you & certainly not your clearance in any way whatever.

The info is collected and a database maintained to show govt agencies we have cleared aircrew/ground/staff that match up with various qualifications (IC, AOBD, FASC, MP, MO). That gives them the capability to do confidential missions in particular geographic areas. The answer to that so far is mostly NO. CAP has enough trouble keeping adequate numbers of mission qualified & competent aircrew, adult ground teams, and mission staff in immediate geographic areas. As we build more & more members with existing clearances, that increases our capability as an organization to gain additional missions.

As far as the missions themselves...

Man you know a clearance doesn't mean much in the first place. A secret clearance is barely different than what we run on new adult members for CAP anyway. The important thing is the non-disclosure statement that means we can put you in jail if you intentionally disclose material. I see classified stuff all the time, and I can't tell you the difference between that & a hundred other things I see in a day that seem more important but apparently aren't. Somebody at a paygrade above ours makes those calls. A clearance doesn't mean anything to folks like us, it's just an annoyance to do every several years. The answer to what missions is the same thing. They aren't any different than a hundred other things, but someone well above us decided one was classified & one isn't.

If you want an example.. we fly security patrols right now around stuff like the space shuttle, sports stadiums where folks like the president will be (including national conventions), we fly inside restricted airspace over folks like the President a few dozen times a year, fighter intercept. I'll tell you about a mission we flew recently here. It was flying a couple F16 crew chiefs to observe a livefire. Our part of that is no big deal, but the weapons systems delivery & tactics we were observing are not supposed to be on public display. That's stuff we do now, and doesn't even mention the counter drug stuff.

In the future we're moving to NSA-key encrypted radios and gaining more photo/video/FLIR/ARCHER-type technologies. All stuff that lends itself to intelligence collection - or in our case recon.

I know that we have done some missions using cleared folks, and I know there has been a preference stated by customers for cleared folks on several specific missions. It's a legitimate issue. If we were better funded, everyone would have a secret clearance, at least all MO/MP/ICs. But, that costs a lot of money we don't have in the budget.

[hatentx]

 well finnally an answer to my question thank you.  that make it a little more clear in my head.

a secret clearence is a lot more envolved that the background check to get into CAP as a SM.  nobody from CAP pulled me aside for 4 hours to ask me questions.  also I had only gave CAP .0000001% of the amount of info for my clearence

[DNall]

Yeah I understand you give like 26 pages or something of info on a SF86 eQuip, but they actually don't do a whole lot more with it.

CAP does a national agency check by fingerprints & name/SSN. We pay the govt to do that for us & it costs about $25 last I heard.

A secret clearance is the same thing plus local agency checks in every state/county you lived in for the last 10 years. The difference is the end result gets looked at by an actual "investigator" (contractor) and they decide if they need to call refs, dig around more, or not. That process takes several months to a year or more, mostly because of backlog. The standards are also a bit higher. We can pay to get that done as well, but it costs about $150 from what I understand. That's all I got, and no one ever even talked to me.

Now Top Secret is a whole bigger pain in the butt deal that will guaranteed involve a multi-hour interview & a real deal investigation. That's the kind of thing people tend to think of, but that's really not the level we're looking at.

[RiverAux]

For those who were saying (in this or the other thread, I forget which) that telling CAP of a clearance that you have might violate that clearance in the first place.... I'm sure that CAP-USAF knows all about this and if that was actually a problem, they probably would have put the kaibosh on it a long time ago. 

[DNall]

I don't know that anyone said that. It's certainly not the case. You can use your civilian clearance in civilian employment, CAP, or whatever. A clearance is a clearance, regardless of who paid to have it done. It really isn't a big deal.

[wingnut55]

A Top secret clearance costs $50,000 and is only good for less than 5 years. and is re done every 5 years. Every new AF recruit gets a National Agency Check in an early stage. Later on I went from Secret to TS and for the Shuttle program to A "Manned Space Clearance". the Toughest one was with the US justice Department, they constantly monitor you, your finances, personal relationships etc. I remember that they revoked a clearance for a  woman who they deemed to be Gay, yet when I caught some of my people smoking hashish in a well known middle east town they (them) did nothing, very strange these people they are more like Maxwell Smart and agent 99.

[DNall]

Everyone joining the mil gets a national agency check & current local police check (are you currently wanted & how many tix in your home county over the last couple years).

ALMOST everyone (minus like cooks & stuff) is required for their mil job to have a secret clearance. That means you aren't specifically doing anything we actually care much about, but you might come across things just from working around them that shouldn't be posted all over the internet, and we'd like to be able to threaten you with jail time if you do so.

TS is exposed to actually classified information that we really can't have floating around in the public. That costs quite a bit more - 50grand seems real high, but okay, I've never actually heard a number on it. It isn't anywhere on the radar for what CAP or our customers are concerned with though. Secret is what we're talking about.

[Al Sayre]

WIWOAD, the fact that you had a clearance was classified at the level of your clearance.  I'm not sure that CAP has a need to know...

Al.....I don't know when you were on active duty....but that has not been the case for over 22 years.

That's about right, I got out in '89, but those were the rules and they were reiterated during outprocessing...

[AlphaSigOU]

ALMOST everyone (minus like cooks & stuff) is required for their mil job to have a secret clearance....

HEY! I resemble that remark... used to be an Air Farce burger-flipper. And did hold a SECRET clearance throughout my time WIWOAD.   

Probably not required directly for my duties at the time, but back in the day most cooks serving stateside worked as missile alert facility cooks out in American Siberia. The clearance was mainly because of my mobility position in the services squadron.

I had a new SECRET clearance done about 10 years later for a drafting and design project that involved some classified information.

(Careful... I still might get 10 to 20 at hard labor in Leavenworth for revealing the secret recipe for Benito's midnight chow omelet filling!  If you've ever been to 'Spang-Quentin' from the early 70s to 1986 you know what I'm talking about... )

[DNall]

yeah sorry buddy, you know what I mean.