I once had a Top Secret clearance. Continue reading
Like many grizzled veterans, I feel uncomfortable discussing my experiences in the military. Actually, I have always loved to tell stories about my stint in the service, but most of my friends have already heard the best ones quite a few times, so I have gotten out of the habit of doing so. The news of the last few days, however, has brought to mind my own encounters with the nation’s intelligence network.
At the conclusion of seven weeks of MP training at Fort Gordon, GA, I and four other elite graduates were chosen to be assigned to Sandia Base, NM, which at the time was run by an organization called the Defense Nuclear Agency. In all honesty using the adjective “elite” might be a slight exaggeration; we were the last five people alphabetically (Wavada, Willems, Williams, Wilson, and Zimmerman) who had graduated from college, and we were all draftees.
Upon arrival at the base, which is in Albuquerque, we were presented with patches to be sewn on our sleeves to indicate that we were in the DNA. It was no secret. The patch featured a picture of an atomic molecule with a handful of orbiting electrons, and the word Nuclear was even spelled correctly. The base was open to the public, and right in the center was a school that was clearly marked in letters about a foot high: Nuclear Weapons School.
Everyone in the DNA had to receive a top secret (BI) clearance. The BI part indicated that the FBI had done a background investigation. Evidently in those days you could get a regular top secret clearance without bothering Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. It took a while for the clearances to arrive, but that was not of great importance. We were doing routine police work in what to all appearances was a suburb of Albuquerque, and almost none of the tasks were reserved for people with clearances.
For some reason my clearance was late in arriving. One night one of the guys in my platoon was sick, lame, or lazy, and I was assigned to fill in for him as the night guard at the adjoining Manzano Base. This base was definitely NOT open to the public, and no one without a clearance was allowed inside the fenceline. I naturally told my platoon sergeant that, although I would ordinarily be both thrilled and honored to perform this important duty, my clearance had not yet arrived, so I was ineligible for the assignment.
“F*** it,” he replied. “Just don’t tell anyone.” Since I did not have a clearance at the time, I must assume that I can now relate what happened. It could not be classified, right?
I was the only human being on Manzano Base for my four-hour shift. If the Commies had come after whatever was in there that night, I was the only chance that the western world had. I had no keys to any of the buildings. I just walked around gazing at the starlit sky and sang cowboy songs as loudly as I could. Time came close to stopping during this shift, but eventually I saw the headlights of the truck carrying my relief.
After the shift I went to breakfast at the mess hall and picked up a copy of the Albuquerque Journal. On the front page was a story about Manzano Base. It emphasized that the base was both highly secure and extremely secret. It even made the claim that no one without a clearance had ever been inside the gates. I had to wonder what they would have thought if they had known that while that edition of the paper was being printed, the person in charge of access to the base had not yet been cleared.
Sandia Base was merged with the adjoining Kirtland Air Force Base (yes, for decades there were three contiguous bases in Albuquerque). The MP Company was split up and assigned to various “depots” run by the DNA. Even though I only had three months left in my term of service, the army paid to transfer me to Seneca Army Depot in the middle of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. By then I had my clearance.
One of the first things that we did upon arriving was to attend a security briefing. We were told that we had been assigned to a top secret base on which weapons were stored. We were also told in hushed tones about the nature of the weapons. However, we were warned that if anyone asked us what kind of weapons, we were mandated to call them “special weapons” and to provide no further information.
I had seen enough James Bond movies to know that the Russian and Chinese spies were inherently inferior to our own spooks, but it seemed incomprehensible that they would not be able to figure out what kind of weapons were being stored at a base in which every single member of the military wore a patch that clearly identified them as being in the Defense Nuclear Agency. Furthermore, it was public knowledge that the people who worked on these weapons had all graduated from the aforementioned Nuclear Weapons School. This information was not classified.
Of course, none of the people who came with me from Sandia mentioned this inconsistency. We all knew that the army employed its own twisted logic. Furthermore, many of us had only a few weeks left in the service, and we were not about to make waves.
When the fact that I could type was discovered, I was assigned to the Intelligence Office. The “office” actually consisted of two sections. The bosses were two intelligence officers — a green lieutenant and an experienced civilian. Each of them had an office at the end of the corridor. I have no idea what either one of them did all day, but outside of their offices was a sign that read “Intelligence Office.”
The other section, which had its own door, was an open area with four desks and a lot of cabinets. It was home to a civilian secretary who seldom interacted with the rest of us, a private, a sergeant who was on temporary duty and knew nothing about what we were doing, and myself. The chain of command in this area was in reverse order of rank. The lady was the boss, the private was second, I was third, and the sergeant was last. The private and I constructed a sign over the door to our work area that said “Stupidity Office.”
We did not have much to do. I do not know why they stored the personnel files of everyone on the base in our area, but I spent many enjoyable afternoons reading through various files. This was before everything was computerized. If I had wished to, I could have removed objectionable material from my friends’ files and even added letters of commendation. My own file already contained a heartfelt letter of commendation from the general at Sandia Base in appreciation of my heroic performance when our base had been attacked by a handful of peace-crazed Gandhiists. I no longer suffer from flashbacks in the middle of the night, but I wonder how many of my buddies have suffered from PTSD in the intervening decades.
I learned a lot of interesting things while reading the personnel files. For instance, I savored the details of a very juicy incident that had almost cost the captain of the MP company his clearance. I also learned that I had the highest GT score in the MP company, and the first sergeant had the lowest. In fact, his score was the lowest permissible score for an MP. No one ever told me that I could not talk about the contents of the personnel files. As far as I know, they were not classified even though they contained the results of the background information checks done by the FBI.
I never questioned any of this. My strategy in the army was to keep a low profile, do my time, and get out. It worked.
Seneca Army Depot was decommissioned in 2001. A few parts of it have been found useful by various elements of the private sector, but large sectors have been abandoned to the world’s largest herd of white deer, which still lives within the fenced-in area.