4.2 Million Americans Have National Security Clearances [Study]

While Wikileaks has released thousands of documents to the general public the truth of the matter is more than 4 million American’s already have security clearances of their own.

A new study has declared that 4.2 million American’s have access to classified government information, far more people than the Government Accountability Office declared two years ago when they revealed that nearly 2.4 million American’s had security access of varying degrees.

As the Washington Post points out current clearance numbers are just shy of the entire population of the Washington, DC, area.

After revealing the large number of people with national security clearances one member of the Federation of American Scientists said the figure is “astonishingly large” while adding that it’s “another reminder of how quickly the national security bureaucracy has expanded over the past decade.”

The study also revealed that of those with secret clearances one million are private sector contractors. The study also reveals that almost as many private contractors have secret clearances as federal workers.

Does it surprise you to learn that so many American’s have access to secret documents, especially in the private sector? Maybe they should start calling it “not-so-secret clearance.”