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Wouldn't she have trouble getting a security clearance? I'm under the impression that many Senators receive secure briefings.

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She would have trouble getting one, but she doesn't need one. Only a few senators are given access to every classified program. Most senators can request specific accesses if their work/committee requires it, but aren't given access to everything by default- the DoD would need a good reason to deny the clearance, and Manning's case probably counts as a good reason. Even if Manning won she would be a junior senator and not put on any important defense related committees so she wouldn't have a need for a clearance most of the time.

Security clearance doesn’t work that way you still need to be given specific access to compartmentalized information, pretty much anything that is codeword or higher has to be individually read into.

Basically you can have 2 people with the same base clearance but they would have completely different access to information. The security clearance doesn’t even give you access to information by having it, it simply means that you have passed the risk assessment which means you can be cleared to handle classified information and you would handle it in a legal and responsible manner, which regardless what you think about Manning that is clearly not the case.

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