Some believe that we have too much secrecy — “too many secrets.” Perhaps.
Some believe that too many individuals or organizations have the authority to classify material. Perhaps.
Some believe that too many people have security clearances — as of 2012, more than 4.9 million government workers. Perhaps.
Some believe that we cannot or should not always trust those — whether in the military or in the government — who decide what should be classified. Perhaps.
Some believe that individuals entrusted with our nation’s highest secrets have the right to broadcast that information to the world — including our enemies — if and when they disagree with the policy, process or actions protected by the Espionage Act of 1917 and its Amendments. I have my own thoughts on this, but that is neither here nor there in this piece.
Some may ask how a person like Edward Snowden who has been leaking national security secrets like a sieve has been able to, twice, clear the hurdle of the federal government’s background check system – first at the CIA, then as a systems analyst at the National Security Agency.
Now, I understand that some — because of the nature of the NSA surveillance — have no problem with what Snowden has done and are glad that he has been able to access and divulge the information in question. That’s fine. I disagree with the way Snowden went about it, but I will not disparage those who believe otherwise.
But I hope that we can all agree that when it comes to the safeguarding of our nation’s highest national security secrets — those on which we can all agree that must be safeguarded — we should do everything in our power to ensure that those assigned to protect those secrets have indeed been properly screened and investigated — that they can be trusted.
Apparently such is not always the case.
Many concerns have been raised about how those investigations are conducted, by who and at what cost and risk.
Apparently, “[t]he company with the biggest share of contracts is under a federal investigation into possible criminal violations involving its oversight of background checks, officials familiar with the matter told The Associated Press,” according to the Stars and Stripes, which adds:
Nearly three-quarters of the government’s background checks are done by private companies, and of those, more than 45 percent are handled by the U.S. Investigations Services, or USIS, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency overseeing most of the government’s background checks.
Please read here about the size of an industry to which, as Robert Baer, a former CIA veteran says, we are “outsourcing our national security to.” Also, about the cost of the contracts with those companies, about the “$1 billion ‘revolving fund’ paid by federal agencies for most background checks” and about what Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., referred to as a “criminal investigation” of USIS during a June 21 hearing by a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee.
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The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.