When I enlisted in the Navy in 1973, one of the requirements for a commission and eventual assignment as an aviator was that I complete the process for a clearance. I had to fill out a questionnaire and knew that the government would follow up with a background check and interviews with any persons I designated as a reference. This was a worry, as I’d been blessed to grow up in Montana and like a few of my pals, I had had a couple of colorful moments while misspending my youth.

Anyway, at some point while going through either Aviation Officer Candidate School or during initial training, I learned I had been granted a “Secret” clearance. I remember thinking “whew” at the time. A lot of us used to joke (Vietnam was winding down and the military wasn’t exactly the place to be in 1973) that the government was willing to overlook a lot as long as you had a BDH — barely detectable heartbeat.

Having the clearance was necessary to my career. Over the course of the next 20 years I was repeatedly briefed on the care and treatment of any classified material I had a need to know. Most of the time, frankly, very similar information could be accessed in reference books or other publications that were available at a public library. I won’t confirm how accurate the public information was, but I would concede it might be possible to go to the town library rather than the Air Station to review the basic weapons fit of a particular Russian destroyer. Such was the nature of a “Secret” clearance 40 years ago.

But I want to be clear: mishandling any of the information I might have referenced from a page in Jane’s Fighting Ships that was instead written on a Navy document stamped “Secret” meant my clearance would be pulled. Lose my clearance, lose my designator, lose my job in the cockpit, lose my commission, lose my career. Not to mention the possibility of a less than honorable discharge or, if the offense was egregious enough, a 6 x 8 in federal prison with a roomie named Bubba.

We got reminded about those possibilities all the time, not just annually or when we changed a duty station: All the time, active duty and in the reserves, oftentimes in successive briefings in the same day. Briefs started with, “The following information is classified. Treat it that way.”

Fast forward to Mrs. Clinton.

It should be clear to even the most bemused among us that the job of secretary of state of the United States of America requires clearance for information significantly more important to the security of the nation than merely “secret.”

We should all be profoundly concerned about both a government and citizenry that would have an ensign drummed out of the service for being indiscriminate about radio frequency information our enemies can look up in Jane’s while tolerating for an entire political season a person seeking to be our president who without question mishandled information that can be reasonably assumed to reach the “Top Secret/Compartmentalized” level. For the bemused, that’s information that in the wrong hands poses “grave” risk to the security of the United States.

Investigators are redacting copies of recovered emails before they can be shown to sitting congressmen!

Purportedly, any such information was not marked as classified on emails. Mrs. Clinton, the smartest, most competent, most qualified and experienced person in the American political universe, is too without the wit to recognize information that has “grave” consequences for our country. She apparently thinks it’s OK to pass it around on her Blackberry or store it on her insecure and unauthorized bathroom server. A justification is that other secretaries, in other times, may have done something similar.

So because Colin Powell and Condi Rice did it, it’s OK if she does it. What possible difference can it make? So what if similar behavior was banned under her own signature in directives to her State Department? Not guilty.

I read and watch the media chuckle about the double standard with regard to people named “Clinton.” I don’t care if Mrs. Clinton is indicted and prosecuted. I don’t care if she goes to jail. I don’t care if the only consequence for all the lies and misdeeds is that she goes back to fronting for her foundation and continues to cash in as the No. 1 Victim in the vast right-wing conspiracy.

I just want her held accountable for mishandling classified information. She needs to lose her clearance. Coincidentally, one needs a clearance to be president of the United States.

Once she’s held accountable to the same standards as an ensign, then all I’ll have to be concerned about is the current president handing her a pardon and allowing this travesty to continue.

Plunkett is a resident of Kalispell.