I don’t know how you slip through the cracks on a Secret clearance. A BCI should have popped up his arrests and he shouldn’t have been granted a clearance. Chances are somebody got behind and signed off the paper without running the check.
A “secret” clearance isn’t that hard to get, it is the very lowest form of clearance. The only person I know that they really questioned about it was a buddy in basic that had an uncle that one night while drunk in a bar joined the Communist Party. This was in ‘84 during the cold war.
But also remember that Clinton had 8 yrs to screw up clearances (many of his people would have had difficulty otherwise) and Obama has had 5 yrs (every one of his cabinet members would have been denied under the standards we had in ‘84).
He could easily explain away everything except the arrest for shooting out tires claiming he had a “rage-filled blackout”. That would be hard to explain away.
Mere arrests will not necessarily preclude a clearance. There is also the affirmative action angle.
We had a fellow where I worked (he almost certainly had a secret clearance) who did some things that would not have been tolerated (nothing illegal) but he was always willing and eager to put the race card.