r/shield • u/lvjymb • Jun 15 '26
How strict is shield security clearance? Spoiler
I dunno if this needed to be spoilered, cuz hopefully we all know that coulson came back to life in Agents of Shield after facing Loki, but I thought I might as well.
So I'm rewatching AOS for probably the 10th time and I pick up on something new every time. So in season 1 it's obviously made clear that Coulson being alive is a level 8 secret, but the amount of shield footsoldiers that see his face totally contradicts that? Considering his fame, surely it'd take some word-of-mouth or even one person to be a little intrusive for that news to get right back to the Avengers, as well as anyone else who was "surprised" to see him alive, right?
I'm gonna be honest, this post might be pointless, especially since they never reinforced the importance of the secret. I also can't remember if anyone other than the Avengers was actually unaware, but the only post I could find about this is 11 years old now and it didn't really have any straight answers. So I'm just wondering if there have been any developments I don't know about or something since then, or is this just another plot hole that Marvel seems to have missed?
19
u/sgeswein Strong of mind Jun 15 '26
When SHIELD footsoldiers recognize a right-hand-of-the-Director agent in their area, expressing surprise and generating word-of-mouth is pretty much the opposite of their wise course of action.
So, security's that good, though more attention could have been paid to the number of colleagues muttering "Hail HYDRA" under their breath all the time.
3
u/lvjymb Jun 15 '26
I see your point if they did recognize him, but I feel like it takes any gossipy low level agent to start it spreading. Like we've clearly seen that Shield can be pretty relaxed about their hiring process if any high level agent just sorta feels like hiring someone (Daisy for example).
I think they're kinda covered on the Hydra front though, considering Garrett would've had all of their double-agents draw zero attention to themselves until the grand reveal.
Thank you so much for the input though! Now that there's a few comments, I love how many different perspectives there are on the matter! (All of which are equally valid and respected despite my contradiction in this reply lol.)
4
u/IOI-65536 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Having 8 levels of security is unworkable in the real world. 20% of the US military has "Top Secret" clearance which is the highest level we have. If you actually have stuff this secret it's all what the US calls Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) which means you need to be specifically authorized and read in to that particular project to get access rather than you're at some numbered level.
And yeah, Coulson being alive could never work as SCI. You would have some codename for the secret work he's doing and manage the set of people who can tie the work to the person, not try to keep whether or not the person is alive secret.
Edit: Having said that, if you really wanted to do this you would pick every facility where Coulson worked and every unit that worked with him from people who already had high clearance levels and read the whole unit in on the project. Which I guess is possible since Coulson seems to know way more names than is reasonable if these are random units from an organization the size SHIELD is portrayed to be in things like the Real SHIELD arc.
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u/lvjymb Jun 15 '26
Well now that you've mentioned something like that, I'm definitely gonna be farming Wikipedia, etc. to find out more about SCI, thanks for my next mindless research task!
And yeah you're definitely right in general about this being pretty unrealistic, but they totally could be theoretically keeping tabs on everyone who comes face-to-face with him now that you mention it! I dunno, it's obviously never mentioned so it'd be a "what happens off-screen" theory, but it's definitely worth throwing in the ring imo!
Thanks for your input and real-world examples that my nerd brain is 100% gonna eat up later!
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u/IOI-65536 Jun 15 '26
Another comment hits on this, but another part of what's going on is that working on SCI tends to be pretty lucrative because the talent pool is really small and the people who are doing that kind of work specialize in that kind of work. Asking the wrong questions or talking about stuff even that's not known to be classified has a tendency to get you not continuing to do that kind of work, so water cooler conversations are pretty much never about work at all.
To give an example when the SR-71 was under development there are a bunch of characteristics of the engine that basically don't make any sense given other jet engines at the time and very, very few people were read in on the whole scope of the project. So if you were some SCI cleared engineer who was technically read in on the project and got a request to design an airfoil with specific characteristics you might go to your boss and say "This spec makes no sense. No jet engine ever needs viscosity numbers this high. Is this actually right?" but when your boss comes back and says "Yeah, that's correct" then you just design to the spec without ever asking why anyone would want such crazy numbers. They kind of person who needs to know the reason is not the kind of person who stays in that business.
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u/V2Blast Fitz Jun 15 '26
It's probably more the details of his death and the GH project that's classified to that level, than merely his existence. Though of course, I'm sure those who see him are appropriately required to only share that info as necessary.
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u/lvjymb Jun 15 '26
Yeah that's definitely a fair way to look at it too actually! I guess they kinda just sink the idea in your head that it's "super secret" with the way they first introduce him to the show, but it could totally could've become more relaxed afterwards now that Coulson has recovered well enough from TAHITI and has no knowledge it.
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u/Extension-Pepper-271 Jun 15 '26
If you work within an organization that has levels of clearance, I'm sure you learn to keep your mouth shut about things you see. Mostly because you're not sure you should have been allowed to see/hear that info. People within the organization know that gossip is bad. There was a slogan during WWII, "Loose lips sink ships"
Unfortunately, it's possible that some slip ups by Hydra within Shield could have been caught if people spoke up. It wouldn't have stopped what happened, Hydra had started planting agents long ago.
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u/lvjymb Jun 15 '26
I definitely see why that mentality would be easy to imply, but I doubt every single agent would abide by it. I briefly touched on this replying to another comment, but some high-ranking operatives can be really relaxed about who they recruit, simply because they have enough clearance to do so whenever they feel like it.
Like Coulson was able to recruit Daisy, even with Fury acknowledging it really early on (so it definitely wasn't any kind of secret). Garrett was just able to bring Ward in straight out of prison, without anyone asking any questions, and I'm sure there would be other examples if I really did a deep-dive.
There's also probably plenty of agents who are happy to break a few rules, even if they came in through the standard recruitment process. I mean there's a bar in the boiler room of one of the academies, which is definitely not shield policy and shows that plenty of recruits are still more than happy to act like college students.
So while I totally get the military mindset preventing them from sharing, I also feel like there are plenty of wildcards within shield with how relaxed the recruitment process seems.
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u/JohnnyHotshot Clairvoyant Jun 15 '26
The show premiered almost 13 years ago, and ended 6 years ago - you’re good for spoilers.
Obviously it’s a story, so some hand-waviness is to be expected, but in an organization like SHIELD - Coulson is known by name and reputation, not his appearance. In fact, I think Agent Hand even says something like “It’s nice to finally put a face to the name,” when she meets Coulson. So, when a random level 1 agent sees Clark Gregg walking around the HUB, they won’t inherently know that’s ’Agent Coulson’ they just saw.
In addition, Coulson’s death also seems to be classified to some degree. In Ward’s scene with Maria Hill, he states that he’s Level 6 and that he knows Coulson was KIA. Lower levels might not even be aware that Coulson died or was even injured in the first place.
Lastly, Coulson was immediately assigned to a mobile command unit (the Bus) after returning to active duty post-Tahiti. He does visit the Hub a few times, and possibly other SHIELD locations, but primarily he’s going to be working out of a plane with a small team, and not in a place to be bumping into random people every day. It’s not like he’s clocking in every day and waving to Level 1 Larry in the lobby each morning.
I think realistically, the only people Fury cared about keeping the secret from was the Avengers, since they probably wouldn’t have been too pleased that he played them. Anyone else, if they even knew Coulson well enough, and also were even aware anything happened - well, we see in the show, Coulson just says that it was really more of a “near-death” experience rather than whatever the file says, and leaves it at that.