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We are experiencing a level-one security breach and all elevators have been temporarily shut down. Please enjoy a hot cup of tea while we wait for clearance.
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Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
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This assignment is my duty to perform for the US Army. My job is outside your command, my friend. You know my security clearance level remains the same. Copying the SCI is a safety measure, in case there is an electrical glitch. So, I believe we’ve talked enough about this subject. Agree?
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Karl Braungart (Lost Identity (Remmich/Miller, #1))
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In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.
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Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Kushner was the classic profile of a person who would be rejected for a national security clearance, and Kelly’s move to downgrade his clearance level provided comfort to the CIA.
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Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
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Ivanka lied to her father’s face, saying her security clearance had been downgraded as well,” a White House adviser recalled. “She told her father that Kelly had taken her clearance. It was a complete lie.
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Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
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My political adviser, Jenny Brickman, is practically pulling her hair. She doesn’t have security clearance, either, so she doesn’t know the whole story, but her main concern is that she wants me to be seen as a fighter in this hearing. If you can’t fight back, she said, then don’t go. You’ll just be their political piñata.
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Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
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Workforces are flexible, jobs are outsourced, and people are expendable. Moving from employer to employer is now the norm. This means that secrets are shared with more people, and those people care less about them. Recall that five million people in the US have a security clearance, and that a majority of them are contractors rather than government employees.
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Bruce Schneier (Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World)
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At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in early July Trump wanted to talk with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In violation of security rules he invited Turnbull into his Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Only those with the highest U.S. security clearances for Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information were allowed in the SCIF. It was an absolute rule, intended to prevent someone planting listening devices. This facility, a large steel room, had to be torn down after the meeting.
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Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
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At the trial in March 1952, Turing pled guilty, though he made clear he felt no remorse. Max Newman appeared as a character witness. Convicted and stripped of his security clearance,VI Turing was offered a choice: imprisonment or probation contingent on receiving hormone treatments via injections of a synthetic estrogen designed to curb his sexual desires, as if he were a chemically controlled machine. He chose the latter, which he endured for a year. Turing at first seemed to take it all in stride, but on June 7, 1954, he committed suicide by biting into an apple he had laced with cyanide. His friends noted that he had always been fascinated by the scene in Snow White in which the Wicked Queen dips an apple into a poisonous brew. He was found in his bed with froth around his mouth, cyanide in his system, and a half-eaten apple by his side. Was that something a machine would have done?
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Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
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But ultimately, I couldn’t. Something kept preventing me. It just felt wrong. To blank my posts from the face of the earth wasn’t illegal, and it wouldn’t even have made me ineligible for a security clearance had anyone found out. But the prospect of doing so bothered me nonetheless. It would’ve only served to reinforce some of the most corrosive precepts of online life: that nobody is ever allowed to make a mistake, and anybody who does make a mistake must answer for it forever. What mattered to me wasn’t so much the integrity of the written record but that of my soul. I didn’t want to live in a world where everyone had to pretend that they were perfect, because that was a world that had no place for me or my friends. To erase those comments would have been to erase who I was, where I was from, and how far I’d come. To deny my younger self would have been to deny my present self’s validity.
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Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
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Flouting federal laws governing record-keeping requirements. Failing to preserve emails sent or received from her personal accounts, as required by law. Circumventing the Freedom of Information Act. Instructing her aides to send classified materials on her unsecure network. Running afoul of the “gross negligence” clause of the Espionage Act (which meant prosecutors would not have to prove “intent” to find her guilty). Pretending she didn’t know that Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) was classified. Transferring classified material that originated at the CIA, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence sources, to her unsecured network. Authoring hundreds of emails with classified information to people who did not have security clearance. Inducing aides to commit perjury. Lying to the FBI. Engaging in public corruption by using the office of secretary of state to feather the nest of the Clinton family foundation.
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Edward Klein (Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation)
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By the end of June, Strauss had the votes of all but one commissioner. The only scientist on the Commission, Professor Smyth had made it clear that he thought Oppenheimer’s security clearance should be restored. As the author of the 1945 “Smyth Report,” an unclassified scientific history of the Manhattan Project, Smyth was familiar with both Oppenheimer and the security issues at stake. On a personal level, he didn’t particularly care for Oppenheimer; they had been Princeton neighbors for ten years, and Oppenheimer had always struck him as a vain and pretentious man. What mattered was that Smyth didn’t find the evidence convincing. In early May, he and Strauss had lunch and proceeded to argue about the verdict. At the end of their lunch, Smyth said, “Lewis, the difference between you and me is that you see everything as either black or white and to me everything looks gray.” “Harry,” Strauss snapped back, “let me recommend you to a good oculist.
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Kai Bird (American Prometheus)
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As Garrison had tried to show, belatedly, the Gray Board hearings were patently unfair and outrageously extrajudicial. The primary responsibility for the proceedings lay with Lewis Strauss. But as chairman of the board, Gordon Gray could have ensured that the hearing was conducted properly and fairly. He did not do his job. Instead of taking control of the hearing to maintain fairness, which would have required him to rein in Robb’s illicit tactics, he allowed Robb to control the proceedings. Prior to the hearing, Gray permitted Robb to meet exclusively with the board to review the FBI files, a direct violation of the AEC’s 1950 “Security Clearance Procedures.” He accepted Robb’s recommendation that Garrison be denied a similar meeting; he acquiesced to Robb’s refusal to reveal his witness list to Garrison; he did not share Lawrence’s damaging written testimony with the defense; he did nothing to expedite a security clearance for Garrison. The Gray Board was, in sum, a veritable kangaroo court in which the head judge accepted the prosecutor’s lead. As AEC commissioner Henry D. Smyth would insist, any objective legal review of how the hearing was conducted surely would result in its nullification.
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Kai Bird (American Prometheus)
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The cropped photo that Life printed with Oswald holding a rifle was found in a box removed from the garage and taken to the police department, then returned the next day with no one present to identify its origin. Accessory after the fact, a letter was delivered to Marina in December undated and unsigned to cover up General Walker’s anxiety over blaming a “Communist,” Lee Oswald, for shooting at him in April. Ruth Paine gave the letter to Marina. It wasn’t in the home before then. The Warren Commission required planted evidence to divert attention from Oswald’s links to the Defense Department. Michael Paine was employed by Bell Aircraft, a DoD contractor. This job required security clearances—what would the Oswalds, an American “defector” and his transplanted Russian wife, be doing in his home?
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Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
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intrusion: someone had accessed and exfiltrated 19.7 million security clearance applications. Not only was the applicant information stolen, but the applications themselves revealed information about 1.8 million nonapplicants referenced in the applications, mostly family members. Even worse, they got transcripts of interviews conducted by background investigators, along with the usernames and passwords that applicants had used to fill out forms online, and 5.6 million fingerprint files. We all but knew from the start that Chinese intelligence was responsible for the theft, and the counterintelligence implications were staggering, not just from what they had, but from what they didn’t have. OPM didn’t conduct security clearance investigations for all of the IC elements, and whoever had the wherewithal to penetrate its systems would certainly know which agencies and departments OPM conducted investigations for and which they didn’t. They could therefore also start making assumptions about cover for cleared people whose files they didn’t have.
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James R. Clapper (Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence)
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For the affected security-clearance holders, the fact that it was Chinese intelligence that had stolen their information was—truthfully—both good news and bad. The good news was that Chinese intelligence was not likely to sell their personal information on the black market, so the employees were less likely to become victims of identity theft than if cyber criminals had perpetrated this breach.
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James R. Clapper (Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence)
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Secretary Clinton hadn’t intentionally disclosed secrets, as CIA director Petraeus had done, but I was surprised that she’d participated in email conversations about such sensitive information. If a line IC employee had done the same, I expect we would have held proceedings to decide if that person should keep his or her security clearance and continue employment.
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James R. Clapper (Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence)
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In Secretary Clinton’s case, the answer to the first question—was classified information mishandled?—was obviously “yes.” In all, there were thirty-six email chains that discussed topics that were classified as “Secret” at the time. Eight times in those thousands of email exchanges across four years, Clinton and her team talked about topics designated as “Top Secret,” sometimes cryptically, sometimes obviously. They didn’t send each other classified documents, but that didn’t matter. Even though the people involved in the emails all had appropriate clearances and a need to know, anyone who had ever been granted a security clearance should have known that talking about top-secret information on an unclassified system was a breach of rules governing classified materials.
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James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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Everything in government seems to take longer than it should. My vetting process dragged on. Making sure the subsidies embedded in my Stanford mortgage did not violate conflict-of-interest rules took several weeks to resolve. Even though I already had a top secret security clearance, I had to get a new one to become ambassador. That
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Michael McFaul (From Cold War To Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia)
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At the end of World War II, the U.S. military set up an agency called the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, whose mandate was to implement Operation Paperclip, a program in which U.S. military and spies fanned out across Europe, seeking German scientists and engineers to bring home to America. Even before the war with Germany had ended, the Cold War was in full swing, and the U.S. government was desperate not just to obtain the knowledge these men held, but to keep their ideas, research, and abilities out of the hands of the Soviets. President Truman was adamant that no actual Nazis be brought back to the States, but the generals and spies ignored this edict from their ostensible commander-in-chief. When confronted with Nazi war criminals like the infamous Wernher von Braun—inventor of the German V-2 rocket and dedicated exploiter of slave labor, who was personally responsible for flogging and torturing people, and whose program resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands—the army and intelligence services whitewashed records, expunged files, and erased evidence of Nazi Party membership. They not only brought the most evil of criminals back to the United States, but gave them the highest of security clearances.
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Ayelet Waldman (A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life)
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Baade, born and raised in Germany, had lost his U. S. citizenship papers, and found himself classed an enemy alien. Barred from security clearance, he was left alone with the 100-inch telescope. As if in an astronomer’s fantasy, he watched from Mt. Wilson as the lights of Los Angeles disappeared into wartime blackout.
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Timothy Ferris (The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe)
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An accident with nuclear weapons is at the top of his list, and it is difficult to discuss that topic with someone who doesn’t have security clearance. But the Trump people didn’t have it either, I point out, so he’ll just need to work around my handicap. “I have to be careful here,” he says. He wants to make a big point: the DOE has the job of ensuring that nuclear weapons are not lost or stolen, or at the slightest risk of exploding when they should not. “It’s a thing Rick Perry should worry about every day,” he says.
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Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
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How they got in touch with each other in other instances, only they know. But paying a mistress with taxpayer funds and giving her a security clearance? These were new lows.
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Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
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You can’t say that, you can’t know what’s going to happen.” “As soon as you get a higher security clearance, I’ll show you the crystal ball that I keep hidden in the bottom of my closet, but until then . . .” He kissed me. “Until then we’re going to keep making memories like this, moments when we’re the only two people in the whole world. And when we get scared or lonely or confused, we’ll pull out these memories and wrap them around us and they’ll make us feel safe.” He kissed me again. “And strong.
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Laurie Halse Anderson (The Impossible Knife of Memory)
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enforcement more broadly including a list of names that had been seen as prying into activities of the Trump administration including: James Comey, James Clapper, NSA Director Michael Hayden, Susan Rice, former FBI members Lisa Page and Peter Strozk, former Deputy A.G. Sally Yates, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who had already lost his security clearance when he was fired by Trump earlier in the year) and the DOJ's Bruce Ohr who had been recently demoted.
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Tim Devine (Days of Trump: The Definitive Chronology of the 45th President of the United States)
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two things were often weaponized and used against people in the Trump administration, even if there was no reason: the security clearance process and the launch of internal investigations. Either could be deadly to a person’s reputation, and the news of them often leaked to sympathetic reporters in the press. All anyone had to do to launch such an attack was mention inappropriate behavior to an allied senior staff person and an investigation was opened, which in turn could cost the person accused his or her security clearance or even job. The outcome of the investigation was often beside the point. Just being “under investigation” hurt your reputation inside and outside the building.
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Stephanie Grisham (I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House)
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a man so wrapped in secrecy that his shadow doesn’t have a high enough security clearance to stick to his heels.
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Charles Stross (The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files, #4))
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#TYLER exists in the high-frequency wireless signal spectrum as a hyper-secure encrypted communications system so a direct physical terminal is really only possible to those with ultra top-secret clearance. However, #TYLER accesses, monitors, and responds to all communications that are transmitted over digital transmission mediums.
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Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Age of Discovery Book 3))
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There were more than 1,200 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence programs, the Washington Post found in 2010, and more than 850,000 people in America had top-secret clearances, producing 50,000 intelligence reports a year. The U.S. intelligence budget alone has at least doubled since 2001, and by 2013, stood at more than $70 billion a year,
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James Risen (Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War)
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Turing’s secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carrying with him a jar of cyanide solution and an apple. Twenty years earlier he had chanted the rhyme of the Wicked Witch: “Dip the apple in the brew, Let the sleeping death seep through.” Now he was ready to obey her incantation. He dipped the apple in the cyanide and took several bites. At the age of just forty-two, one of the true geniuses of cryptanalysis committed suicide.
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Simon Singh (The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography)
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I also believe strongly in the powerful words: “I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” They are good ones to live by.
The big, final motivator was that I really wasn’t enjoying my university studies.
I loved the Brunel and our small group of buddies there, but the actual university experience was killing me. (Not the workload, I hasten to add, which was pleasantly chilled, but rather the whole deal of feeling like just another student.)
Sure, I like the chilled lifestyle (like the daily swim I took naked in the ornamental lake in the car park), but it was more than that. I just didn’t like being so unmotivated.
It didn’t feel good for the soul.
This wasn’t what I had hoped for in my life.
I felt impatient to get on and do something.
(Oh, and I was learning to dislike the German language in a way that was definitely not healthy.)
So I decided it was time to make a decision.
Via the OTC, Trucker and I quietly went to see the ex-SAS officer to get his advice on our Special Forces Selection aspirations.
I was nervous telling him.
He knew we were troublemakers, and that we had never taken any of the OTC military routine at all seriously. But to my amazement he wasn’t the least bit surprised at what we told him.
He just smiled, almost knowingly, and told us we would probably fit in well--that was if we passed. He said the SAS attracted misfits and characters--but only those who could first prove themselves worthy.
He then told us something great, that I have always remembered.
“Everyone who attempts Selection has the basic mark-one body: two arms, two legs, one head, and one pumping set of lungs. What makes the difference between those that make it and those that don’t, is what goes on in here,” he said, touching his chest. “Heart is what makes the big difference. Only you know if you have got what it takes. Good luck…oh, and if you pass I will treat you both to lunch, on me.”
That was quite a promise from an officer--to part with money.
So that was that.
Trucker and I wrote to 21 SAS HQ, nervously requesting to be put forward for Selection. They would do their initial security clearances on us both, and then would hopefully write, offering us (or not) a place on pre-Selection--including dates, times, and joining instructions.
All we could do was wait, start training hard, and pray.
I tossed all my German study manuals unceremoniously into the bin and felt a million times better. And deep down I had the feeling that I might just be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
On top of that, there was no Deborah Maldives saying I needed a degree to join the SAS. The only qualification I needed was inside that beating heart of mine.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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Godfrey. This guy was a Marine for twenty years, Special Forces for eleven of them. He had top-level security clearance, has three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and countless commendations and…” the captain scanned some more pages. “Holy shit… this can’t be right. No way. God, am I reading these initials right?” God took extra notice now, his captain rarely cursed. God looked at what his captain was pointing at. This guy had received a lot of awards, but his captain’s finger was hovering over the initials MH, and it gave him pause. “What is it?” Green asked. “Damn, now I’m intrigued.” “What is it, God?” Syn squinted at him. “He received the Medal of Honor in ‘09 from President Clinton.” God tossed the file back on the table. “Still doesn’t mean I trust him.” “It means he’s trustworthy. That’s the highest military medal there is. They don’t just give those to anyone, and you know it. The guy’s a certified winner on paper… let’s see if he fits in with you miscreants.
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A.E. Via (Nothing Special V (Nothing Special, #5))
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There were other important reasons for the growth of American individualism at the expense of community in the second half of the twentieth century besides the nature of capitalism. The first arose as an unintended consequence of a number of liberal reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. Slum clearance uprooted and destroyed many of the social networks that existed in poor neighborhoods, replacing them with an anonymous and increasingly dangerous existence in high-rise public housing units. “Good government” drives eliminated the political machines that at one time governed most large American cities. The old, ethnically based machines were often highly corrupt, but they served as a source of local empowerment and community for their clients. In subsequent years, the most important political action would take place not in the local community but at higher and higher levels of state and federal government. A second factor had to do with the expansion of the welfare state from the New Deal on, which tended to make federal, state, and local governments responsible for many social welfare functions that had previously been under the purview of civil society. The original argument for the expansion of state responsibilities to include social security, welfare, unemployment insurance, training, and the like was that the organic communities of preindustrial society that had previously provided these services were no longer capable of doing so as a result of industrialization, urbanization, decline of extended families, and related phenomena. But it proved to be the case that the growth of the welfare state accelerated the decline of those very communal institutions that it was designed to supplement. Welfare dependency in the United States is only the most prominent example: Aid to Familles with Dependent Children, the depression-era legislation that was designed to help widows and single mothers over the transition as they reestablished their lives and families, became the mechanism that permitted entire inner-city populations to raise children without the benefit of fathers. The rise of the welfare state cannot be more than a partial explanation for the decline of community, however. Many European societies have much more extensive welfare states than the United States; while nuclear families have broken down there as well, there is a much lower level of extreme social pathology. A more serious threat to community has come, it would seem, from the vast expansion in the number and scope of rights to which Americans believe they are entitled, and the “rights culture” this produces. Rights-based individualism is deeply embedded in American political theory and constitutional law. One might argue, in fact, that the fundamental tendency of American institutions is to promote an ever-increasing degree of individualism. We have seen repeatedly that communities tend to be intolerant of outsiders in proportion to their internal cohesiveness, because the very strength of the principles that bind members together exclude those that do not share them. Many of the strong communal structures in the United States at midcentury discriminated in a variety of ways: country clubs that served as networking sites for business executives did not allow Jews, blacks, or women to join; church-run schools that taught strong moral values did not permit children of other denominations to enroll; charitable organizations provided services for only certain groups of people and tried to impose intrusive rules of behavior on their clients. The exclusiveness of these communities conflicted with the principle of equal rights, and the state increasingly took the side of those excluded against these communal organizations.
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Francis Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity)
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scholars and academics invited for conferences or seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not.
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Anonymous
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have security clearances anymore.” “So
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David Baldacci (King and Maxwell (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell, #6))
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Alan Turing was another cryptanalyst who did not live long enough to receive any public recognition. Instead of being acclaimed a hero, he was persecuted for his homosexuality. In 1952, while reporting a burglary to the police, he naively revealed that he was having a homosexual relationship. The police felt they had no option but to arrest and charge him with “Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.” The newspapers reported the subsequent trial and conviction, and Turing was publicly humiliated. Turing’s secret had been exposed, and his sexuality was now public knowledge. The British Government withdrew his security clearance. He was forbidden to work on research projects relating to the development of the computer. He was forced to consult a psychiatrist and had to undergo hormone treatment, which made him impotent and obese. Over the next two years he became severely depressed, and on June 7, 1954, he went to his bedroom, carrying with him a jar of cyanide solution and an apple. Twenty years earlier he had chanted the rhyme of the Wicked Witch: “Dip the apple in the brew, Let the sleeping death seep through.” Now he was ready to obey her incantation. He dipped the apple in the cyanide and took several bites. At the age of just forty-two, one of the true geniuses of cryptanalysis committed suicide.
”
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Simon Singh (The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography)
“
So Luke went to the back of the SUV where Sean was unloading way too many suitcases for five nights. “You’d think she was taking a fricking cruise.” “Your death is going to be slow and painful.” “Aw, come on! What’s up your butt now? You had plenty of time to get used to the idea. And she’s thrilled to be here, you can see that.” “You told her all about Shelby? I didn’t even tell you what was going on with Shelby! Can’t you ever keep your mouth shut about anything?” “I beg your pardon—I fly a spy plane. I have a very large security clearance. I told her about Shelby to piss you off.” He grinned. “Did I hear right? We’re going to the general’s for dinner?” “Listen to me carefully, because if you screw this up I really will kill you. She’s young and inexperienced, not my type, I’m too old for her and it’s not serious. Her uncle is trained in hand-to-hand combat and he doesn’t like that she likes me. It’s not the usual thing, so just keep your big mouth shut. You hear me?” “Whew, this is making you testy,” Sean said with a smirk. “That means it’s heating up. Where’s Art?” “In his cabin. I’ll go get him as soon as we get these bags in the house.” Luke hefted two. “Jesus, where did she think she was going?” “She plans to be at her best for your new friends. You know, you could have avoided all this by just going to Phoenix for two days.” “I’ve been trying to avoid you for years, but you just won’t go away,” Luke grumbled. “This was your idea and you know it. Don’t screw with me.” Sean stiffened. “In three seconds we’ll be back twenty years, rolling in the dirt. Let’s not do this to her, huh? She really gives a shit what’s happening with you. I don’t, but she does.” “Ach,
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Robyn Carr (Temptation Ridge)
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4.2 million people hold SECRET security clearances; 1.3 million of them hold TOP SECRET clearances. In the Washington, D.C., area alone, more than 17 million square feet of space is dedicated to storing classified information.
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Jack Carr (Red Sky Mourning (Terminal List #7))
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Evidence that the Black Operations had been involved in developing new energy sources was provided by Dr. Michael Wolf who worked in Area 51 and its satellite, Area S4, and who allegedly had one of the highest security clearance of anyone in the United States. In an extensive interview with Chris Stoner, Dr. Wolf said: Satellite government scientists have successfully created zero point energy and cold fusion. There needs to be a smooth transition into these new sciences. Otherwise the world economy could be wrecked.23
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Paul T. Hellyer (The Money Mafia: A World in Crisis)
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A task force of the American Bar Association described the bleak reality facing someone convicted of a petty drug offense this way: [The] offender may be sentenced to a term of probation, community service, and court costs. Unbeknownst to this offender, and perhaps any other actor in the sentencing process, as a result of his conviction he may be ineligible for many federally-funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing, and federal educational assistance. His driver’s license may be automatically suspended, and he may no longer qualify for certain employment and professional licenses. If he is convicted of another crime he may be subject to imprisonment as a repeat offender. He will not be permitted to enlist in the military, or possess a firearm, or obtain a federal security clearance. If a citizen, he may lose the right to vote; if not, he becomes immediately deportable.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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J. Kirk Wiebe See Nothing Questionable About Montgomery’s Security Clearance Paperwork, Confirm “Parallel Platforms Exist
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Mary Fanning (THE HAMMER is the Key to the Coup "The Political Crime of the Century": How Obama, Brennan, Clapper, and the CIA spied on President Trump, General Flynn ... and everyone else)
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Had Trump been an appointed official he would never have passed a security clearance because of his foreign dealings. This was the Donald J. Trump Eyes-Wide-Open-Blind-Trust.
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David Cay Johnston (The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family)
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Jared, for instance, omitted from his SF86 that Trump Tower meeting with the Kremlin agents, his request to Kislyak to use secure Russian diplomatic communications, and a meeting he had had with the head of a Russian “bank” that the FBI regards as a front for Russian spying. The FBI had caught spies at the bank’s Manhattan office posing as bankers. Any one of those omissions too would be reason to deny a security clearance.
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David Cay Johnston (The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family)
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Tricia Newbold, one of the White House employees who works on security clearances, told a House committee that at least 25 Trump staffers got clearances over objections from those whose job was to vet applicants. Newbold told the committee that “two current senior White House officials” were among those given clearances despite “a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct.” The background check of one person, publicly described only as “Senior White House Official 1,” uncovered “significant disqualifying factors, including foreign influence, outside activities (‘employment outside or business external to what your office at the [Executive Office of the President] entails’), and personal conduct.
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David Cay Johnston (The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family)
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Loyalty is the most treasured virtue, far above honor or talent or love, and the greatest guarantee of loyalty can be found in kin ties.” That would explain not only the security clearances but why Trump gave his son-in-law such a broad portfolio of issues in which neither of them had a wisp of expertise. Trump had no training in diplomacy, but he had a nose for developing lucrative relationships and knew he could trust Jared to do what he wanted and to keep secrets within the family.
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David Cay Johnston (The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family)
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Did you learn, in all your research, that I am an investor in Redner Industries? That I have access to all its experiments?” “Oh fuck,” Isaiah said from across the pit. “And did you ever learn,” Micah went on, “what Danika did for Redner Industries?” Bryce still crawled backward up the stairs. There was nowhere to go, though. “She did part-time security work.” “Is that how she sanitized it for you?” He smirked. “Danika tracked down the people that Redner wanted her to find. People who didn’t want to be found. Including a group of Ophion rebels who had been experimenting with a formula for synthetic magic—to assist in the humans’ treachery. They’d dug into long-forgotten history and learned that the kristallos demons’ venom nullified magic—our magic. So these clever rebels decided to look into why, isolating the proteins that were targeted by that venom. The source of magic. Redner’s human spies tipped him off, and out Danika went to bring in the research—and the people behind it.” Bryce gasped for breath, still slowly crawling upward. No one spoke in the conference room as she said, “The Asteri don’t approve of synthetic magic. How did Redner even get away with doing the research on it?” Hunt shook. She was buying herself time. Micah seemed all too happy to indulge her. “Because Redner knew the Asteri would shut down any synthetic magic research, that I would shut their experiments down, they spun synth experiments as a drug for healing. Redner invited me to invest. The earliest trials were a success: with it, humans could heal faster than with any medwitch or Fae power. But later trials did not go according to plan. Vanir, we learned, went out of their minds when given it. And humans who took too much synth … well. Danika used her security clearance to steal footage of the trials—and I suspect she left it for you, didn’t she?” Burning Solas. Up and up, Bryce crawled along the stairs, fingers scrabbling over those ancient, precious books. “How did she learn what you were really up to?” “She always stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. Always wanting to protect the meek.
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Sarah J. Maas (House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City, #1))
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Prayer is heaven’s highest security clearance—free access to stroll right into the heavenly vault, gather up whatever we can carry, and hand it out to the world.
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Tyler Staton (Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer)
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The United States fends off millions of attempted cyber intrusions into military and other government networks each month.86 In 2015, hackers most likely acting at the behest of the Chinese government stole the highly classified security clearance information of twenty-two million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management.
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Condoleezza Rice (Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity)
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Russia had infiltrated the Treasury in 2015; and Tricia Newbold, a White House employee suspended for exposing that security clearances had been knowingly given to staffers who violated national security protocol.27 Among those staffers were Jared and Ivanka.
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Sarah Kendzior (Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America)
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One feature of the economic revival of the early seventeenth century was the rapid exploitation of the woodlands. During the Tudor period the destruction of the woods had already begun, though mainly for military reasons: they blocked the passage of the royal armies, and afforded secure fastnesses into which the more lightly-equipped Irish troops could easily retreat. It was therefore a constant policy of the government to open up passes; and during the later Elizabethan wars this was extended to a general clearance of large areas. Fynes Moryson, who travelled extensively in Ireland at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, declared that he had ‘been deceived in the common fame that all Ireland is woody’, for in the course of a journey from Armagh to Kinsale he found, except in Offaly, no woods at all, beyond ‘some low shrubby places which they call glens’. But Moryson’s description cannot be applied to the whole country. At the beginning of the seventeenth century there were still extensive woodlands in Munster; the great wood of Glenconkeyne in Ulster was reckoned by Sir John Davies to be as big as the New Forest in Hampshire; and even beyond these areas, the country was at this time fairly heavily timbered. But the process of destruction was soon to be speeded up.
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J.C. Beckett (The Making of Modern Ireland 1603 - 1923)
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Wesley Wong: I was down in the command center at the World Trade Center lobby, and John O’Neill saw me and he came up to me. John always had his cell phone to his ear—no matter when you saw him, he was always on his cell phone. Just like that morning, the morning of 9/11, he had his cell phone. He saw me and said, “Wes. What can you tell me?” He had just retired from the FBI and he was on his second day as director of security for the World Trade Center. I said to John, “You’re no longer with the FBI. You don’t have a clearance. I can’t tell you what’s going on.” Even under times of stress and crisis, I can be a smart aleck. He said, “Wes, if you don’t tell me, I’m going to wring your scrawny little neck.” I told him what I knew, and he asked, “I’ve heard that the Pentagon has been hit?” I said, “We’re hearing that. Let me confirm,” and I called headquarters. They confirmed that the Pentagon had been hit. I relayed this back to John. He said, “Well, I need to go check on my people in the South Tower.” As he walked away I said to him, “Hey John. I owe you lunch. I missed your going-away lunch. When this is all over, let’s have lunch.” He said something that’s music to every agent’s ear. He said, “Wes, I’m on an expense account now—lunch will be on me.” John O’Neill was last seen in the stairwell of the 48th floor of the South Tower. Jackie Maguire: We heard the rumble of the first tower starting to fall.
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Garrett M. Graff (The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11)
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there were many contacts during the campaign and the transition between Trump associates and Russians—in person, on the phone, and via text and email. Many of these interactions were with Ambassador Kislyak, who was thought to help oversee Russian intelligence operations in the United States, but they included other Russian officials and agents as well. For example, Roger Stone, the longtime Trump political advisor who claimed that he was in touch with Julian Assange, suggested in August 2016 that information about John Podesta was going to come out. In October, Stone hinted Assange and WikiLeaks were going to release material that would be damaging to my campaign, and later admitted to also exchanging direct messages over Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, the front for Russian intelligence, after some of those messages were published by the website The Smoking Gun. We also know now that in December 2016, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-controlled bank that is under U.S. sanctions and tied closely to Russian intelligence. The Washington Post caused a sensation with its report that Russian officials were discussing a proposal by Kushner to use Russian diplomatic facilities in America to communicate secretly with Moscow. The New York Times reported that Russian intelligence attempted to recruit Carter Page, the Trump foreign policy advisor, as a spy back in 2013 (according to the report, the FBI believed Page did not know that the man who approached him was a spy). And according to Yahoo News, U.S. officials received intelligence reports that Carter Page met with a top Putin aide involved with intelligence. Some Trump advisors failed to disclose or lied about their contacts with the Russians, including on applications for security clearances, which could be a federal crime. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to Congress about his contacts and later recused himself from the investigation. Michael Flynn lied about being in contact with Kislyak and then changed his story about whether they discussed dropping U.S. sanctions. Reporting since the election has made clear that Trump and his top advisors have little or no interest in learning about the Russian covert operation against American democracy.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
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Here, new agents receive a total of sixteen weeks of training, combined with another twelve and a half weeks of training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) at Glynco, Georgia. To apply to be a Secret Service agent, an individual must be a U.S. citizen. At the time of appointment, he or she must be at least twenty-one years of age but younger than thirty-seven. Agents need a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university or three years of work experience in the criminal investigative or law enforcement fields that require knowledge and application of laws relating to criminal violations. Agents’ uncorrected vision can be no worse than 20/60, correctable to 20/20 in each eye. Besides passing a background examination, potential agents must take drug tests and pass a polygraph before they are hired and given a top secret security clearance.
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Ronald Kessler (In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect)
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The Prince alighted from his gleaming silver-blue jet, his mind firmly on the task at hand: to persuade his close friend to go to war. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington, was in Crawford, Texas, in August 2002 to visit the President of the United States, his close friend George W. Bush. At the President’s ranch the two men, comfortable in one another’s company, chatted for an hour. The President was in determined mood. Bandar’s exhortation that he should not back off, that he should complete what his father had failed to do, that he should destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein once and for all, gratified the President. Satisfied by their mutual reinforcement, the dapper enigmatic Prince and the cowboy President took lunch with their wives and seven of Bandar’s eight children. A few weeks later, President Bush met the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at Camp David. The two leaders declared they had sufficient evidence that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction to justify their acting against Saddam, with or without the support of the United Nations. Prince Bandar’s role in Washington and London was unique: diplomat, peacemaker, bagman for covert CIA operations and arms dealer extraordinaire. He constructed a special relationship between Washington, Riyadh and London, and made himself very, very wealthy in the process. The £75m Airbus, painted in the colours of the Prince’s beloved Dallas Cowboys, was a gift from the British arms company BAE Systems. It was a token of gratitude for the Prince’s role, as son of the country’s Defence Minister, in the biggest arms deal the world has seen. The Al Yamamah – ‘the dove’ – deal signed between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia in 1985 was worth over £40bn. It was also arguably the most corrupt transaction in trading history. Over £1bn was paid into accounts controlled by Bandar. The Airbus – maintained and operated by BAE at least until 2007 – was a little extra, presented to Bandar on his birthday in 1988. A significant portion of the more than £1bn was paid into personal and Saudi embassy accounts at the venerable Riggs Bank opposite the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. The bank of choice for Presidents, ambassadors and embassies had close ties to the CIA, with several bank officers holding full agency security clearance. Jonathan Bush, uncle of the President, was a senior executive of the bank at the time. But Riggs and the White House were stunned by the revelation that from 1999 money had inadvertently flowed from the account of Prince Bandar’s wife to two of the fifteen Saudis among the 9/11 hijackers.
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Andrew Feinstein (The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade)
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Although he was wanted in Europe for Nazi war crimes, senior State Department and CIA leaders intervened on Hilger’s behalf and brought him to the United States under an alias, giving him high-level security clearance and the veneer of respectability through postings at Harvard and Johns Hopkins. Hilger made no apologies for his Nazi loyalties.
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Eric Lichtblau (The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men)
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Later that month, the State Department’s inspector general reported that a handful of Hillary’s e-mails contained information that was classified at the time the messages were sent. While it’s not possible to send e-mails directly from the government’s classified systems to outside accounts, there are a few ways in which classified material can end up in outside e-mail—for example, information that should have been classified was not categorized that way by the sender, or someone unwittingly included secret or sensitive passages in a message sent outside the classified systems. Hillary and her aides argued that she was being railroaded by agencies retroactively classifying information in some cases, and, in others, citing material that was not marked classified when it passed into and out of her in-box. Ultimately, what they were saying was that Hillary clearly didn’t intend to transmit classified information—a legal distinction that would become important when federal investigators considered whether to charge her with a crime. In addition, the vast majority of the e-mails that included classified material were traded with people who had security clearances consistent with the levels at which the information in question was classified. That is, Hillary wasn’t giving out secrets to people who shouldn’t have had them; she was just e-mailing the right people on the wrong system. But from a public relations perspective, the technicalities didn’t matter. Hillary had told the nation that she didn’t traffic in classified information, and government investigators put the lie to that assertion day after day. In many cases, the twists and turns—the discovery of more highly classified material—played out first in stories leaked to the media for maximum impact.
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Jonathan Allen (Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign)
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certain employees can only trade Amazon.com securities during designated trading windows, and certain employees must obtain pre-clearance from the Amazon Legal
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Anonymous
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As evidence, he dug up those flimsy charges the army and FBI had investigated ten years before: that Oppenheimer was secretly a Communist and maybe even a Soviet spy. Strauss devised a plan for taking Oppenheimer down. He’d have the AEC strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. Without this clearance, Oppenheimer would no longer be allowed to see secret information on the latest atomic weapons research. He couldn’t advise the government, because he wouldn’t know what was going on. Oppenheimer had two options: demand a hearing, or simply walk away. He knew by now that nothing he did or said could stop the arms race. But there was a principle involved—he couldn’t let the charges against him go unchallenged. “This course of action,” he told Strauss, “would mean that I accept and concur in the view that I am not fit to serve this government that I have now served for some twelve years. This I cannot do.” Oppenheimer got his hearing, but it was bogus from the start. Strauss personally picked the panel of judges. The FBI tapped Oppenheimer’s phones and listened in on conversations between him and his attorney. This illegally gathered information was used against Oppenheimer in court.
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Steve Sheinkin (Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (Newbery Honor Book & National Book Award Finalist))
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Briggs had a top-level security clearance and regularly advised military leaders, the secretary of state and various directorates including the Departments of Defense and Justice. He attended social events at the White House and was accustomed to briefing the president. For obvious reasons he’s of keen interest to the U.S. intelligence community, which isn’t going to insert itself directly into the domestic investigation of his death. The CIA is sneakier than that. Typically it uses the FBI as a liaison or a front because global spymasters aren’t supposed to deal directly with domestic medical examiners, cops and the likes. That’s a sanitized way of saying that in the real world the CIA is the invisible witch rubbing the FBI’s crystal ball, diverting and deploying its agents and experts like a squadron of flying monkeys. What happens next suddenly and without warning is they descend upon your scenes, your witnesses, your offices, paper records, database, labs, morgues, your very homes and families. There’s no regard for what damage might be done, and cops like Marino may never know what hit
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Patricia Cornwell (Chaos (Kay Scarpetta, #24))
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How Early Can You Check In for Lufthansa?
Lufthansa’s online check-in opens 23 hours before departure, allowing you to select a seat and download your boarding pass. For airport check-in, it’s recommended to arrive at least 2–3 hours before an international flight. Need help? Call the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. For further details, contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
You can check in for your Lufthansa flight 23 hours before departure via the website or mobile app. For long-haul flights, it’s best to check in at the airport at least 3 hours prior. Have questions? Contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. For more information, call the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
Lufthansa allows online check-in 23 hours before takeoff, while airport check-in times vary depending on your destination. It’s advisable to arrive early for baggage drop and security clearance. For assistance, dial the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. If you need additional help, contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
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Poul Duedahl
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How Early Can You Check In for Lufthansa? {{Step-by-Step-GuiDe}}
Lufthansa’s online check-in opens 23 hours before departure, allowing you to select a seat and download your boarding pass. For airport check-in, it’s recommended to arrive at least 2–3 hours before an international flight. Need help? Call the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. For further details, contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
You can check in for your Lufthansa flight 23 hours before departure via the website or mobile app. For long-haul flights, it’s best to check in at the airport at least 3 hours prior. Have questions? Contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. For more information, call the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
Lufthansa allows online check-in 23 hours before takeoff, while airport check-in times vary depending on your destination. It’s advisable to arrive early for baggage drop and security clearance. For assistance, dial the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA. If you need additional help, contact the Airline Helpline number (USA) 1-888-690-5835{{OTA}} or (UK) +44 8000 663 343{{OTA.
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Poul Duedahl