as a former contractor to a military contractor, my clearance was granted by... the government

back in the waning days of the cold war, i did some "hunt for red october" work for darpa (defense advanced research projects agency).
technically, i was an independent contractor working for bell labs, which was a contractor for darpa.

sure, i had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with bell labs, but this only covered bell labs' proprietary information, *none* of which was classified.

for the first 6 weeks or so of my contract, they had me holed up in a room outside the secured facility (which i could not legally enter) basically twiddling my thumbs and being completely useless because the project i was to work on used classified data (location of sonar assets, ocean depths, etc.) they couldn't bring anything useful out to me until my clearance came through.

finally my secret-level security came through, after disco (defense investigative services clearance office) did their usual proctology exam, querying my third cousins and kindergarten teacher and so on. ok, i exaggerate a little here. but not much.

these days, disco has been replaced by dss (defense security service) but the concepts are the same. access to classified information and facility is grants *only* by the government. contractors are *not* legally permitted to grant clearance to anyone.

why on earth would bell labs have paid me for 2 months to do *nothing* of value other than wait until my clearance came through? and here i'm not exaggerating to say i did nothing of value. it's not like the boss thought i was being useful but i was faking it. the boss *told* me "you can't do anything useful here until you have clearance, just read the newspaper or something while you wait."


http://www.dss.mil/psmo-i/ps_faqs.html#7

7. DO CONTRACTORS HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO GRANT, DENY, OR REVOKE PERSONNEL CLEARANCES FOR THEIR EMPLOYEES?
No. This authority is reserved by the Government.