Fear porn. Point to the scary unknown as a justification for X.
I tend to think our math teachers were right. If you can't show your work, then didn't do any. (Not an absolute but I lean heavily that way.)
> once they get security clearance
Or it could be that once they get authority, the intelligence community tries harder to scare the shit out of them. There's no way to know if Obama, for example, is getting more legitimate info. I don't buy off on it being safe to assume that he is. If you listened to the intelligence community they'd have you believing that everyone on your block is a lone wolf, bomb wielding, child porn collector. Or that the only reason we haven't had another 9/11 was because of the NSA's phenomenal cosmic power.
Is Obama getting more honesty from the NSA or is he getting more bullshit? We don't know. We only know that he's getting more something. Do you expect the NSA to say something other than "Boss, I'm doing good work"? Are they going to say "um, yeah, so, that big spy network we built... um... it basically doesn't do shit for us"?
The TL;DR is that it's not just the scary details he's getting access to but the high level political shenanigans too.