Nuclear Weapons

Security-Cleared Population Declined by 12% Last Year

04.27.15 | 2 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

The number of persons holding security clearances for access to classified information decreased by more than 635,000 (or 12.3 percent) last year, according to a new report to Congress from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

It was the first reported drop in the total security-cleared population since the government began systematically collecting statistics on security clearances in 2010.

The majority of the reductions involved persons who had been cleared for access to classified information but did not in fact have such access. Still, at the end of FY 2014, there were 164,000 fewer individuals with access to classified information than at the beginning of the year, the ODNI report said. Most of the reductions occurred within the Department of Defense, which reported a 15% decrease in clearances (Secrecy News, March 26).

Altogether, there were 4.5 million cleared persons as of October 1, 2014, down from 5.1 million cleared persons a year earlier. Top Secret clearance holders, including government employees and contractors, numbered 1.4 million persons, down from 1.5 million the year before.

What makes the new reductions particularly interesting is that they were not simply a statistical blip or an artifact of changes in the budget. Rather, they were purposefully achieved through a “concerted effort” by agencies seeking to reduce the number of security clearances.

“These decreases were the result of efforts across the USG to review and validate whether an employee or contractor still requires access to classified information,” the ODNI report said.

The implication is that the national security bureaucracy, including the national security classification system, is susceptible to deliberate regulation and is not, as sometimes appears, an autonomous entity driven obscurely by its own internal dynamic. It follows that additional changes in the size and structure of the national security system may be achievable.

The new ODNI report also noted:

*    There was a 14.4% reduction in new and renewed security clearances.

*    The National Security Agency had the highest reported rate of security clearance denials (9.2%), while the FBI had the lowest reported rate (0.1%). The CIA reported a denial rate of 6.5% and a revocation rate of 0.6%.

The ODNI report cautioned, however, that different agency denial rates may not be comparable due to differences in reporting practices.

The unclassified annual report on security clearances was required by Congress in the FY 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more