2. Executive Office of the President · Minor
Let the NSC adjudicate and hold its own security clearances
Printed page 51 2. Executive Office of the President · abridged
“NSC staff leads, under the direction of the NSA, should have the discretion to reduce the number of positions that need high-level clearances, and the NSC should be adequately resourced and authorized to adjudicate and hold security clearances internally with investigators who work directly for the NSC and whose sole task is to clear NSC officials.”
What has happened
- Not started
The NSC does not adjudicate or hold its own clearances. NSPM-1 reorganized the Council in detail — membership, committees, staff fusion, chairing — and says nothing about clearance authority, investigators or position sensitivity. No executive order, presidential memorandum or Federal Register document in the window transfers adjudicative authority to the NSC or funds investigators working solely for it. If anything the January 2025 purge exposed the opposite: after the detailees were removed, the Council's intelligence directorates had to work out who was even cleared to receive the President's Daily Brief.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Negative search. Read NSPM-1 in full. A search of White House presidential actions and presidential documents in the Federal Register for “security clearance” returns nothing establishing an NSC adjudication facility; the 277 executive orders of the window were listed by title and none concerns NSC clearances. The clearance observation is from Lawfare, 13 July 2026 (used as Evidence on #59), and is context, not delivery.
- Action
- create
- Object
- Internal NSC security clearance adjudication
- ID
- 62