That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the clearances mean.
First and foremost, they're just a background check. There are lots of janitors and painters that have Secret or Top Secret clearances so they can work in buildings that contain that kind of information. There are large swaths of people that work in factories with clearances that really couldn't tell you anything of value - but they have to pass a background check to get the job.
Then once you narrow it down to the people that have actual classified knowledge, they generally only know a sliver of a small area and that's it. "Need to know" matters a whole lot.
The people with wide ranging access to lots of different databases is very small. I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access.
First and foremost, they're just a background check. There are lots of janitors and painters that have Secret or Top Secret clearances so they can work in buildings that contain that kind of information. There are large swaths of people that work in factories with clearances that really couldn't tell you anything of value - but they have to pass a background check to get the job.
Then once you narrow it down to the people that have actual classified knowledge, they generally only know a sliver of a small area and that's it. "Need to know" matters a whole lot.
The people with wide ranging access to lots of different databases is very small. I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access.