You said that there is no level strictly above Top Secret (just comparmentalizations within that). Is there any actual evidence for that? (I mean, non-classified evidence; I'm not asking you for classified information.)
Where did you get the statistic about 1 in 50 to 70 Americans have had at least a Secret classification? That seems absurd.
What are you talking about when you say "cut off from the outside world most of the time, no idea what the current news is most of the time"? It wasn't clear at all, but I guess you mean "while physically working in a classified area"; (i.e. you're no longer cut off at the end of the workday)?
Secret ain't really that secret. That's why they invented Top Secret. Seriously, if you add up all the military veterans and people who used to work in defense/government contracting who have had to access slightly classified information, that's not an unreasonable ratio.
You guys aren't presenting real evidence, just making up numbers. 1:10 is absolutely ridiculous. If there are 4.2 million now (according to the Daily Mail article cited elsewhere), that's 1.36 percent. You're never going to get that to 10 percent, expecially since (as the DM article says) the currently high number is due to recent expansion of the number of people who have clearances (so you can't argue about tons of retirees as easily). I realize that we're counting "people who have ever had a clearance," but I doubt there's going to be like 5 to 10 times the # of contractors who once had a contract, but don't currently have one (again, the increasing number of clearances argues against that).
You can get a clearance at 18, and people live into their 70s and 80s pretty regularly. The 4.2 million with a clearance are not the same ones that had a clearance 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 etc. years ago.
We had a draft until the early 70s. Tens of Millions of people have been through the military system, and this doesn't even count civilian types, contractors, cleaning people, building facility people, secretaries, etc.
The Vietnam war saw about 9 million people in the military for example.
There's about 25 million vets in the U.S. right now.
It's pretty simple math to arrive at number well above the current number. Remember, just because you aren't in the club, doesn't mean it isn't big.
Let's look at what 10% means. There are ~300 million people in the U.S. 10% of that number is 30 million. Let's say that every single man and woman who is currently in the military or has previous served has a clearance (with no overlap). There are about 3 million active and reserve people right now in the military.
25 + 3 = 28 million. Now let's add in non-military government civilians with clearances, the CIA for example is a civilian agency with an estimated 20,000 people, DIA, 16,500, DTRA, 2,000, DOE: ~110,000, NGA 16,000, NRO, 3,000, NSA 20,000 (civilians only, 38,000 total), DHS, 216,000, DOJ, ~112,000, State, ~50,000, etc.
I'm not even including treasury. And we're up to almost 29 million people.
Now how many contractors do you think have Secret clearances?
Lockheed Martin employes over 100,000 people, Northrup Grumman, 120,000, General Dynamics, 91,200, SAIC, 46,000 etc. etc. etc.
And we rapidly go past 1:10.
Now obviously not every single person I've listed has (or has had) a Secret clearance. But until you start shaving off huge percentages out of each organization you're still between 1:10 and 1:15.
If you disagree with these numbers, the onus is on your to provide better ones.
There are also also over 20 million military veterans in the United States; probably most of those will have had a security clearance. Once you add former federal employees and contractors, 10% isn't far off.
All fair questions (I don't know why the down votes for you)!
"You said that there is no level strictly above Top Secret (just comparmentalizations within that). Is there any actual evidence for that? (I mean, non-classified evidence; I'm not asking you for classified information.)"
There are no levels strictly above Top Secret. At least as far as the military is concerned. SAP programs and compartmentalizations provide more than enough OPSEC to keep things classified. For example, I don't personally have access to the Nuke Codes. But the guys who do all have Top Secret clearances and are read onto some specific compartments and SAPs.
There are also clearance equivalencies at other agencies. DOE for example, has a different kind of system, but they more or less map to DoD clearances. Some agencies are highly compartmentalized, the CIA for example.
"Where did you get the statistic about 1 in 50 to 70 Americans have had at least a Secret classification? That seems absurd."
I don't know the exact number, but I have a pretty good idea that agrees with some back-of-the-brown-paper-bag calculations, it's perfectly within reason.
For example, say there are 1 million people in the military right now. And say all of them have at least a Secret clearance (it's probably more like 70%-80%, most jobs get you at least this clearance level just as a matter of course). That's about 1:300 (or 1:430 or so depending), say right now there are about 25 million veterans (from the Census), that's already 1 in 12.
During the Manning news, it was reported that currently there are more than 4 million people with clearances and one million of them had Top Secret clearances.
I'm sorry, I appreciate the information, but you're not actually giving evidence for your claims about TS being the highest.
Same thing for the ratio of people in the military (except for the Daily Mail citation, which is quite helpful). I mean, Army grunts are not required to have clearances [1], for example, so you can't just say "assume everyone in the military has a clearance..."
[1] This may be a misunderstanding on my part, but that's what I've been told. You don't want to clear (and probably can't clear) a ton of 18yo cannon fodder.
I'm assuming you aren't actually asking me to prove a negative. If a reading of NISPOM doesn't clarify it for you, then there's really nothing more I can say that will persuade you from your conspiracy theory.
Army Grunts are required to have a clearance. General Infantry (18yo cannon fodder in your parlance) must have at least a Secret clearance. Army Cooks, may even be required to be cleared.
Think you can run around with 5th generation night vision goggles and state of the art body armor, talk on encrypted radio equipment, know troop movement information, chase after specific enemies and report back on activities on Secret level systems without a clearance? Think again.
Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say we can say there's a piece of information that is so dangerous, so important, that releasing that information could endanger the entire population of the planet. Say, the nuclear codes.
These are arguably the most sensitive information in the world. Why would there need to be a classification level above and beyond TS and the appropriate compartments and or SAP program to protect them? Some sort of Super Top Secret?
Or for fun, let's say Area-51 has alien tech there, or we have a secret military base on the moon, or a Stargate. Why wouldn't it just be protected under a SAP? A Super Top Secret doesn't buy you anything at all in terms of protecting that information. Nor does a Super Duper Top Secret. As somebody not in the SAP and not with a need to know, I wouldn't even know the SAP exists to protect the Stargate program, or the alien autopsy videos, or whatever. Only the people in the SAP and a handful of people managing the SAPs of the agency that created it even know of the SAPs existence and/or what it protects. SAPs can even have sub-compartments that provide even further protection.
Practically speaking this offers what can be perceived to be "high levels of clearance" but in fact are all just plain jane Top Secret.
Where did you get the statistic about 1 in 50 to 70 Americans have had at least a Secret classification? That seems absurd.
What are you talking about when you say "cut off from the outside world most of the time, no idea what the current news is most of the time"? It wasn't clear at all, but I guess you mean "while physically working in a classified area"; (i.e. you're no longer cut off at the end of the workday)?