That Whole Sharing Classified Intelligence Thing

Gentlemen, it’s not a freakin’ Scruples question (“Your security clearance allows you access to intelligence detailing a terrorist attack on the city in which your son lives . . .”)! The federal employees who E-mailed everyone they knew in the New York metropolitan area warning them not to ride the subways last week have been stripped of their security clearance:

Two federal employees have been stripped of their security clearance for allegedly tipping friends and family to the New York City subway terror threat, sources said yesterday.

William Ross, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain now working for the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Safety Administration, was being questioned for allegedly alerting his son of a possible terror attack – three days before Mayor Bloomberg and the FBI went public with the warning, sources said yesterday.

“As some of you know my father works for Homeland Security, at a very high position and receives security briefings on a daily basis,” his son, Nick Seligson-Ross, who runs a dance troupe, wrote in an Oct. 3 E-mail – one of two electronic messages sent out to big shots in the city’s arts and business communities.

“The only information that I can pass on is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subways for the next two weeks,” the E-mail warned some New Yorkers before Bloomberg was fully briefed on the threat.

. . .

The second tipster, who has high-level security access, has been transferred to a division that does not deal with sensitive information as the investigation continues, sources said.

The tipster’s information allegedly found its way into an E-mail sent out by production company owner Tony Micocci Oct. 5.

“I have just received a most disturbing call from one of my oldest friends … who, by dint of his position, has access to the highest level of intelligence traffic,” Micocci wrote. “He called with a very specific caution to not enter the New York City subway system from Oct. 7-Oct. 10.”

That E-mail circulated in the New York arts and business community a day before the public was notified of the threat.