Security clearances don’t determine whom a president can trust – they reveal risks the president may not know

A report found that Natalie Harp, a close aide to President Trump, worked in the White House for more than a year without completing the standard security clearance process, despite interim Top Secret/SCI access being authorized only as a stopgap. She reportedly declined multiple times to begin the vetting before finally submitting paperwork after internal concerns and the president's own intervention.

A former CIA, NCTC and NSA executive walks through why this matters: clearance investigations aren't really about loyalty, they're about surfacing vulnerabilities the person themselves, or the president, might not know exist. Interim clearances exist to bridge the gap between an urgent staffing need and a slow-moving investigation, but they were never meant to substitute for that investigation entirely.

The piece notes that even the government's own targets are being missed by a wide margin, with the GAO reporting the fastest 90% of initial Top Secret clearances averaging 206 days against a 114-day goal. A year-plus gap for someone in the president's immediate orbit, the author argues, is not a technicality but exactly the scenario the system was designed to prevent.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.