When I was 26 I had a Top Secret security clearance, and I was officer in charge of a five-person Intelligence Operation in support of a squadron of photo-reconnaissance F-4 aircraft.
We were in Japan in support of the attempt to do something about the disaster that losing a small navy intelligence gathering vessel and crew to North Korea had foisted upon the United States.
I had had that clearance since I had been 24.
The guy who recently leaked the PowerPoint stuff was 21.
All the press, including NPR and PBS, have focused on since the leak and the leaker have been identified is the fact that the leaker was "only 21".
John Stewart frequently excoriates the Press for vapid and repetitive focus on meaningless minutiae.
Or things that are true, but have no bearing on anything.
Like the fact that Alvin Bragg didn't lay out his entire case against the dildo in excruciating detail on arraignment day.
"What kind of idiot would have done that?" might have been a useful question for the press to ask.
And exploring the implications of that question might have produced tangible, useable news.
Rather than doing that, they declared something about which they know nothing at all (and that pisses them off) a "nothing burger".
And now everybody is up in arms about a "21 year old kid" having a security clearance.
18, 21, 24 and 26 year old kids are the ones who go to war.
They probably have a need to know what's going on.
So they get security clearances.
The problem isn't their age, it's their values, mores and grip on reality.
I had no values, mores or grip on reality when I was 24 or 26.
I still do not.
Have any values, mores or grip on reality.
But I hadn't been brought up in a Catholic Cult with a lot of video games and didn't have the internet as a vent for my pent-up spleen.
Or an intense need to be known and loved by others such as I.
So, what I knew, and classified stuff in those days wasn't worth a pitcher of warm piss, didn't get leaked.
But that's just the luck of the slime of time draw.
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