Mishandled security documents being all the rage these days, perhaps I ought to go through all the stuff that I carted home from work when I retired. You never know what I might find. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.

A few years ago I wrote about the time I was investigated for mishandling classified material. Of course, that was long before I had a security clearance.

About a year or so after that incident, Bill Bevan hired me to head the newly formed Information Center—that was the name then being given to the group in charge of personal computers, don’t ask me who dreamed it up; I think it originated with IBM, but don’t quote me.

Anyway, once I was officially ensconced in the computer world, it only took another couple years before I was promoted to chief of the Remote Systems Branch—that just meant I was in charge of all the systems that were not the mainframe. And since some of those “remote systems” were actually housed in the same area as the mainframe, I needed clearance to access the computer room.

So it wasn’t long before a nice woman from Washington showed up to interview me. She asked me a bunch of questions and she wanted me to give her some references. I gave her a few names including Allan Rosen, a former boss, Frank Scott, a good friend, and Ron Funk, a guy I had known since my days in State College and who also worked at DPSC.

As it turned out, she knew Ron. She had worked at DPSC years earlier and she and Ron had been good friends, so when I spoke to him shortly after that he told me that she had asked him a few questions about me, and then they spent the rest of their time together just catching up with each other.

Frank Scott told me that no one ever called him, and I never asked Allan Rosen.

One of my neighbors did tell me that someone came around to ask about me, and she gave me a clean bill of health.

In any case, I got the clearance, so I was free to enter the computer room.

Years later, when I had long since left that office and returned to the Directorate of Clothing and Textiles, I found out that I still had my clearance. Did I want to renew it? No, thank you.