Actually the need-to-know is WAY more important than the official security clearance. In an emergency you can give anyone TS information if they have a need-to-know. They are granted a temporary TS clearance and given the information.
“Actually the need-to-know is WAY more important than the official security clearance”
Absolutely true! The “clearance” is simply a pre-qualification process that gives the government some assurances that you are not a spy. When I worked on classified military weapons programs, I only knew what I was doing. I had no knowledge of what was going on in other programs being prosecuted in the same facility. What was really interesting was when the “hardware” from one of my programs, was waived by a Senator in the Senate where they were “investigating clandestine weapons programs.” That was decades after the fact. I didn’t know whether the Senator was violating classification, or that it had been declassified. A friend who did not know about my connection to the program sent me an article about what had gone on in the Senate, and I felt I could not even respond.