The Air Force has quietly eliminated all in-person and virtual hearings for Special Access Program (SAP) appeals, replacing them with a paper-only process and making the service’s special access oversight office the final authority.
“The [Special Access Program Central Office] appeals process will transition, effective January 21, 2026, from in-person hearings located in the Washington, D.C. area to an administrative appeals process. This process will not permit in-person or virtual presence of appellants, legal counsel or any other supporting entities,” Vincent Liddiard, director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, wrote in a Jan. 21 memo.
Under the new process, the director of the special access program central office (SAPCO) will initiate an administrative review to assess whether restoring access to the appellant poses a security risk. The deputy director will then review all relevant documents and make a decision, which may be appealed to SAPCO, but the director’s decision is final and unappealable.
Dan Meyer, partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, said the memo “is not as clear as it probably should be.”
It is unclear whether the Air Force will allow appellants to submit written responses instead of a personal appearance or hearing, which would be a “rather benign change,” Meyer said. “I think that people may still get the same amount of due process.”
Another possibility, however, is that decisions will rely entirely on existing security files, with no opportunity for individuals to respond.
“Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me, given some of the changes recently. But that would be a loss of due process at that point, because you wouldn’t have a hearing, and you wouldn’t necessarily have a fresh opportunity to put in a written reply when you get the decision to be denied access to Special Access Programs,” Meyer said.
The key question now is whether individuals will be allowed to see derogatory information underlying a SAP denial and then respond in writing.
“If that’s the case, then this might be an okay substitute. But if this is a denial of the hearing, and you still don’t have the ability to see what you’re having special access denial for — that’s not going to be much of an improvement at all,” Meyer said.
“Why are we doing this? I thought the Air Force was pretty progressive in this area, more progressive than the Army and the Navy. But it may be that they’re now retrenching, and we’re in a new system. There’s a new focus, security is in a different place now than it was even four or five or six years ago. So we’re seeing changes across the board, jurisdiction shifting between different entities. And it may be that the Air Force is looking at the current environment and can decide that it can button down more, give people less due process. Or it may be that they just find the idea of in-person hearings too difficult to staff and handle the access and they just want to go to a paper file. If it’s the latter, then they shouldn’t have a problem with allowing the person to respond to why they’re losing SAP access,” he added.
‘More conservative’ due process model
The new memo represents a major change for Air Force personnel — including contractors, service members and civilian employees — whose access to Special Access Program materials is now subject to a different review process.
“What it means for the individual is folks have to spend a lot more time thinking about all the things that they’re doing that could cost them a security clearance. People have to get more conservative. They have to go back to the way the system ran in the 1960s and ’70s, where people were a lot more tight-lipped, they kept less debt, they followed all the guidelines. Things have been very permissive since the early 1990s and I think we’re rolling back to old school.” Meyer said.
Higher-Level Guidance
It’s unclear whether broader Defense Department changes prompted the Air Force’s new policy. Meyer said the memo could signal that a broader rewrite of Defense Department Special Access Program instructions is underway. It is also possible that the Air Force acted unilaterally.
Ideally, Meyer said, guidance on changes to Special Access Program access and appeals should come from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“Once [Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard issues the guidance, then all the department heads should issue guidance, and then all the people below the department heads should issue guidance, and then all the people below the department head should issue guidance. But in this case, from what I can tell, it just popped out, and we’re still researching that to find out where the other offices are providing their guidance. Because I agree — this is pretty thin,” Meyer said.
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