Contractor Behind Snowden Vetting Did Washington Shooter Check

[Tony_FLADEM]

Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2013, 06:15 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Bloomberg

The U.S. government contractor that vetted Edward Snowden, who leaked information about national surveillance programs, said it also performed a background check on the Washington Navy Yard shooter.

USIS, a unit of Falls Church, Virginia-based Altegrity Inc., did Aaron Alexis’s background investigation in 2007, Ray Howell, a USIS spokesman, said in an e-mail.

“Today we were informed that in 2007, USIS conducted a background check of Aaron Alexis” for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Howell said.

Howell said yesterday that USIS hadn’t vetted Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Navy Yard on Sept. 16 and then died in a shootout with police. Alexis had a secret-level clearance that would have enabled him to get an access card needed to get on the base.

The company can’t comment further because it is contractually prohibited from retaining information gathered during its background checks for the personnel office, he said.

Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the personnel office, has said there may have been shortcomings in USIS’s vetting of Snowden, a former Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (BAH) employee who worked for the National Security Agency.



Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-19/contractor-behind-snowden-vetting-did-washington-shooter-check.html

[DURHAM D]

1. Hinky link.

btw USIS is owned by the Carlyle Group

[Cryptoad]

4. That speaks volumes !! nt

[seabeckind]

9. And wouldn't you know it...

Booz Allen is owned by the Carlyle group also.

Isn't it a small world?

[KamaAina]

20. It appears to be owned by Providence Equity Partners.

http://www.provequity.com/investment-portfolio/Altegrity

Is that a front for the Carlyle Group?

[kelliekat44]

34. Another one of those lucrative Federal contracts going to a RW anti-America group.

It's time to reverse the trend started under Ronald Reagan with his Peter Grace-countracting out movement. At least vetting for Federal jobs should be performed by Federal employees and security agencies. I really hope Ed picks up on this and does a segment about it. Most RW ditto heads are never exposed to stories like this on FOX or Rush shows.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. It is pretty clear that their bottom line is higher than their integrity.

Just another corporate swine sucking off the government teat.

[DURHAM D]

3. All taxpayers need this -

http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/udderly-smooth-body-%26-udder-cream-lightly-scented/ID=prod4928801-product?ext=gooPersonal_Care_PLA_Creams_prod4928801_pla&adtype={adtype}&kpid=prod4928801&sst=3a3bf870-2554-d0c8-dba7-00000f0412df

[jmowreader]

7. No, more like this

http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/astroglide-personal-lubricant--moisturizer/ID=prod835964-product

[warrant46]

18. For a few certain blessed individuals ----its a Large Public Teat

[1000words]

5. "The Parallax View," starring Warren Beatty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View

[jmowreader]

6. Channeling Dr. Strangelove...

...right after George C. Scott told the president one of his bomb wing commanders went insane and sent his planes to nuke the Soviet Union...

"General Turgidson! When you instituted the Human Reliability Tests, you assured me a thing like this could never happen!"

'You can't condemn a whole program because of one little slipup.'

[pinboy3niner]

8. Reason link is hinky is that it's missing http://

You need that to hyperlink:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-19/contractor-behind-snowden-vetting-did-washington-shooter-check.html

[Tony_FLADEM]

10. Thanks!

[DURHAM D]

11. From the article

The Office of Personnel Management, which conducts most federal background investigations, paid USIS $253 million for its work last year.

Fire those fuckers and hire federal employees instead.

[global1]

12. Somebody Needs To Review All The Security Checks That USIS.....

has performed. Sounds either like they don't do a good job or are (and here's my tin-foil hat) passing the wrong people on purpose.

[DURHAM D]

13. They have been caught "fabricating" clearances several times but

nothing will happen to them because after all "It Is The Carlyle Circle Jerk Group"

[Luschnig]

14. I smell a liability suit

because anyone else whose products (services) proved to be so disastrously inadequate would certainly face a suit.

[Sunlei]

15. god, how many billions of our Federal funds did our Gov. pay that contractor 'corp.'?

[DURHAM D]

21. $253M in 2012.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. Wow. Outsourcing for the win.

There is no contract option for the background checks I undergo. That's incredible.

[alp227]

17. Totally surprising, NOT! nt

[frylock]

19. was there anything in snowden's background that would've precluded him from receiving his clearance?

[Thinkingabout]

23. Didnt they find he was an activist?

[Botany]

24. yes

high school drop out, kicked out of the army, dropped out of computer school, and
yet he got a high level security clearance ... by lying .... to work with computers
handling some of the most classified secrets of the federal government.

something about snowden and how he got his job doesn't pass the smell test

[snooper2]

37. Snowy shouldn't have had a job running Ethernet cables

or punching down 66 blocks

[Botany]

22. This would not happen if they weren't using contractors .....

.... certian jobs need to be done by the government .... end of story

[24601]

25. Sorry, but a few things just don't add up. Clearance requirements for a SECRET clearance verses

a TOP SECRET clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) access aren't close to the same.

For a SECRET Clearance, the requirement is a National Agency Check and Local Files Check (also called NACLC) and a credit check. The Contractor role would be submitting the individual's name & SSN to run through government databases. The contractor, however, does not adjudicate the information - just package it for the government agency which must make the determination to grant the clearance or not. SECRET clearances are re-run every 10 years.

For a TOP SECRET Clearance, with or without SCI access, the individual fills out Standard Form 86 as the 1st step to a Single Scope Background Investigation. The investigators, government or contractor, or a mix, collect the data to verify what's on the SF-86. As with any clearance, the resulting information is turned over to the government agency that will adjudicate the information. TOP SECRET clearances are supposed to be re-done every 5 years.

Some agencies also conduct polygraphs, some don't. NSA and CIA require civilian employees to pass both life-style and counterintelligence polys. For many personnel assigned to sensitive positions requiring access to SCI or Special Access Programs, or NC2-ESI (formerly SIOP-ESI - the Nuke Plan), the requirement could be willingness to take a poly if asked. Then some are selected randomly. Examiners are government personnel.

Some agencies conduct the NACLC on spouses or co-inhabitants of persons undergoing the SSBI.

So the blame implied by the article likely is blown out of proportion based on who precisely does what in the clearance processes. Unlikely that a contractor would be at fault for a SECRET Clearance unless they didn't request the checks or didn't pass on what they received to the government adjudicator. Sloppy collection could result in a faulty SSBI. But it's also possible that everything collected was accurate, and even adjudicated properly. The fault can be that an individual turns AFTER the clearance is granted but before the next reinvestigation.

This wiki page also has a link to the SF-86: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Scope_Background_Investigation

[seabeckind]

26. Wow...thanks for all that info.

for minute there I thought this guy had received a security clearance that he shouldn't have received.
Now I realize that it could never have happened.

I'm glad you cleared that up.

Thanks very much.

[Historic NY]

27. How hard is it for one of the Cabinet Secretaries to call them up and fire them immediately..

from any further work. At the very least they should be suspended pending a criminal investigation.

[bluedigger]

28. Well for one thing, who's going to pick up the slack?

Once you replace government workers with contractors you no longer have those government employees available to do the work. So the government has to hire people to do background checks. And those people need... background checks.

[Historic NY]

29. Thats the problem hiring replacement private workers.

[MADem]

31. We've got a lot of people leaving the military in the next few years.

I'll bet some of them are ideally suited for that kind of desk-driving. They're trained, they understand military protocols, they have a good work ethic, and they need jobs.

I'm betting we could find some decent "civilian" help in those demobbed service personnel.

[bluedigger]

32. Oh, it's a fixable problem all right.

But the poster I was responding to wanted action "immediately". That's a little harder.

[MADem]

33. Hee hee....there's "immediately" and then there's federal government "immediately."

The latter is like turning an aircraft carrier!

[seabeckind]

35. Most times

it's difficult for the people who were very much involved in causing the problem to find ways to correct the problem.

[seabeckind]

36. Heard this argument a lot

it's the one that's used to help justify the need for contracting out.

It's also used to justify the need for H1B visas.

The people are there. The talent is there. It might be difficult for a while. It might cost more for a while. It might mean that when evaluating cost more attention has to be paid to intangible benefits instead of just pure money.

Most contracts for technical services include a clause to prevent the stealing of an employee between the two signees. But, if a company is being told their contract is being terminated but it's possible that some of the contract employees will be picked up as a gov't hire, I'm sure there are many who would jump at the chance.

Being a contract employee has some pay advantages but most times it involves uncertainty, possiblity of slack time at no pay, lack of benefits, etc. I know of many contract people who have joined the public sector.

The problem as I see it is that we have had a steady degradation of gov't worker talent. As people retired their expertise left with them. Add to that the dumbing down of mgmt and it's a recipe for disaster. Dumbing is the wrong word but I'm a little at a loss for terminology.

With the beginning of the Reagan era there was a shift in mindset. Instead of focusing on the engineering/technical side the trend was to focus on the MBA mindset and pay less attention to the engineering side.

But then our industry went the same road, didn't it?

Cost of everything, value of nothing.

[arely staircase]

30. as long as dick cheney is somehowb making a buck

Whats to complain about?