1995-08-05 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Ending a bitter vestige of the Cold War, President Clinton declared yesterday that gays and lesbians no longer would be regarded as a security threat to the United States and ordered that federal agencies cease denying anyone access to classified information based simply on sexual orientation.

More than 200,000 people have federal security clearances both in and outside government. In addition to federal employees, the president's order affects employees working for private companies in high-tech, defense and other industries who require security clearances.

For decades, gays were denied clearances on the ground that they could be more easily blackmailed or compromised with threats that their sexual orientation would be made public. However, in recent years several government agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, have been granting security clearances to gays. The president's order now extends that policy to the entire federal government.

"It takes the next step by converting the government from its past role of a hostile adversary into a friend," said 70-year-old Frank Kameny, who was denied a security clearance in the 1950s and has worked since then to change government policy.

Early in his term, President Clinton became embroiled in a controversy over his decision to end discrimination against gays in the armed services, and it was not clear yesterday what effect his latest extension of gay rights would have on his political fortunes.

Apparently wanting to avoid mistakes he made when the issue was gays in the military, Clinton issued an executive order that became effective immediately, thus pre-empting any prolonged or possibly damaging debate. The White House also apparently calculated that this issue does not have nearly as much emotional force as whether gays should serve side by side with heterosexual service personnel.

The president's order reads simply: "The U.S. government does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or sexual orientation in granting access to classified information."

Representative Barney Frank, D-Mass., one of three openly gay members of Congress, said the order was long overdue.

"We all know that innumerable lesbians and gay men have served their country loyally and well throughout its history without betraying its trust or giving away its secrets," said Frank, a driving force behind the changed policy. "But shamefully, until now the federal government was unwilling to acknowledge this fact."

Some saw Clinton's order as part of a larger campaign to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace. "We applaud the administration's action as an important step toward ending governmentally sanctioned job discrimination against gay and lesbian people," said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

There was no immediate response from the Republican leadership. But Representative Robert Dornan, R-Calif., an archconservative who is strongly anti-gay, said: "I wouldn't trust homosexuals with a $5 loan, let alone the nation's secrets."

Yesterday's order effectively nullifies a 1953 executive order issued by President Harry Truman in which he declared "sexual perversion" as grounds for terminating federal employment. Federal agencies then used that standard to label gays as security risks.

During the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy's influence was at its height, thousands of gays and lesbians were fired from the State Department and other government agencies.

"Historically, it has been a major problem," said Leonard Hirsch, president of Federal GLOBE, which represents gay federal employees. "People's lives and careers have been destroyed."

The president's order also nullifies a 1990 Court of Appeals ruling in San Francisco in a case brought by a group called High Tech Gays on behalf of a Silicon Valley employee who was denied a security clearance by the Pentagon. The court upheld the denial.

"Many private companies who require a security clearance just wouldn't hire a gay or lesbian applicant," Hirsch said. "There is an enormous amount of prescreening that this executive order should eliminate."