Do You Have a Need to Know?
Public Domain
For 20 years I held a security clearance with the United States Navy. Not because I was in the Navy, though I had an ID card, but because I was married to someone in the Navy. I needed to have a clearance so I could know when he was coming and going.
Loose Lips Sink Ships, as the World War II warning went, though in our case that wasn’t such a bad thing since he sailed on a submarine.
Still, my clearance did not authorize me to know everything, and it always came down to a simple question: “Do you have a need to know?”
Not a want, but a need.
Many years ago when my husband attended nuclear prototype training in Ballston Spa, New York, I applied for a job at the local newspaper. The editor reviewed my clips and studied me before asking what a girl from California was doing in upstate New York.
His eyes gleamed when he heard why we lived in the tiny town. “I’ll tell you what. You get me any story out of that nuclear power plant and I’ll hire you.”
“I can’t do that.” I hadn’t been married long, but I knew I could not betray my husband that way.
He shrugged and turned away. “Your choice.”
I edited a book instead.
My father served in the Navy during the Korean War and liked to tell the story about how he ended up with a highly classifed clearance. “I was in the radio room when a special code came through,” he laughed every time. “Since I overheard it all, they had a choice: throw me out of the Navy or raise my classification. I got a raise.”
That’s what he said, but he also liked to tell stories of escorting caskets across the country to bereaved families–a Lieutenant?– so it’s hard to know what really happened.
Regardless, it’s an honor to be trusted with secrets and not one that should be taken lightly. In the mid-1980s, the operational tempo of my husband’s submarine changed and many of our friends wore concerned looks on their puzzled brows. I later learned the Soviets suddenly could detect our previously undetectable submarines. What happened?
Family of spies–the Walker family sold out submarine technology for a mere $1 million dollars–mostly to squander on a house and jewelry.
Astonishing, submariners sold the technology that put their shipmates, as well as my husband’s, life at risk for a paltry sum compared to what your government spent to develop it.
Loose lips nearly sank a lot of ships in a terrible betrayal.
I thought about this often as I worked on Bridging Two Hearts. I’ve already written about my experience trying to obtain information, but I was surprised at how readily people in Coronado talked about Navy SEALs, though rarely about operations. Everyone knew where SEALs liked to hang out, where you could find them exercising, where they trained, and often could point out men who probably were SEALs.
Perhaps they spoke more readily to me because I’m a member of the “Navy club,”and I “spoke” their language, but no one asked me for my ID. Only one person asked me who I was–the owner of the local pub where ”they” often can be found. I left him my business card. I did not flash my ID.
But I had my military ID with me. I also had my retired Navy guy with me.
US Navy official photo
Long ago, word came down the boat call tree as a warning to us. “If the Skipjack wives don’t stop talking about maneuvers in the commissary, we’ll revoke all their clearances
and you’ll only know when you men are coming home when they call you from the dock.”
“We” (used generically, certainly not me) knew better and shut up. You didn’t discuss ships movement on the telephone. You didn’t chat with your friends in public. You didn’t even tell the children. I used to mark a fictitious date on the calendar the boys crossed off waiting for Daddy to come home. A week or two out from what I knew to be the approximate date. When he showed up “early,” the boys were thrilled.
They really didn’t have a need to know.
Are you surprised by “secrets” you read about in the paper–things that really shouldn’t be discussed? Why do you suppose many people want to know things they really don’t have a need to know?
