Exclusive: Hundreds of U.S. security clearances seen falsified

[Baitball Blogger]

Source: Orlando Sentinel.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors have documented at least 350 instances of faulty background investigations done by private contractors and special agents for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in recent years, illustrating what some lawmakers call systemic weaknesses in the granting of federal security clearances.

Reuters calculated the total by reviewing court documents and press releases from prosecutors for 21 cases resulting in convictions that involved the making of false statements from December 2004 to March 2012.


These are the cases government officials have cited to assert that action is taken against investigators who falsely claim to have reviewed records or done interviews for background checks submitted to OPM. Not all the cases identified a specific number of fabrications.

The 350 falsified reports represent only a small percentage of the number of background investigations conducted each year, either by OPM's own investigators or a handful of private contractors it uses for most of the work.

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-usa-security-clearances-20130924,0,1393552.story

[gopiscrap]

1. That's what happens when you privatize things

[The Magistrate]

2. King's Business, Sir, Should be Done By King's Men

Anything to do with security of the nation, with keeping its peace, and with preparation for and waging of war, is exclusively the task of the sovereign state, and putting the least scrap of it in private hands is not only wrong in principle, it ought to be illegal.

[Diclotican]

7. The Magistrate

The Magistrate

Very Well written Sir - and right

And in most other nations - it IS illegal for private hands to do this things, as it is part of the exclusively the task of a sovereign state to do it.... The experiences learned by doing the last 500 years - did that in many European nations at least... But hey in the US, they have to put it in private hands..... Oh well - I guess if they can not listen to country's who have some experience with it - they have to learn it by doing it - like sometimes kids have to experience things when they do something wrong...

Diclotican

[indepat]

13. The craze to privatize is little more than overtly transferring public monies into

the deep-pockets of private interests, an example of government promoting the welfare of favored contractors rather than the general welfare, all egregious abuses of Federal authority in fostering a corporatist government imo. And it smells, no stinks, to high heaven.

[Diclotican]

14. indepat

indepat

You are not getting any disagreement from me when it come to this things - it stinks to high heaven

Diclotican

[PSPS]

17. And from those deep pockets into the pockets of politicians

All of this privatization is nothing more than off-the-shelf money laundering. The billionaire CEO, fat from the public teat, dutifully returns a small percentage of his booty as a "campaign contribution" (aka vigorish) to his senator and congressman to keep the scam going.

[jeff47]

11. Much of it is.

Secret clearances can (currently) be farmed out to contractors. And in reality a Secret clearance is very easy to get - if you don't have a criminal record and you don't currently have financial problems, you'll get one.

Top Secret and up can not be done by contractors.

[jmowreader]

23. The investigations can be, though

Ed Snowden's investigation was done by a private contractor.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. Maybe setting up a National Security State where 5 million workers need security clearances

was a bad idea.

[walkerbait41]

4. When I got my security clearance

A long time ago It was done by the F.B.I.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. How about the security clearances of those who work in the nuclear reactor business?

[jwirr]

6. Private contractors do not work. It is also interesting that we investigate the poor who need help

and get only small amounts compared to the wages of the people in this article without asking which one can do the most harm to our government. This is crazy.

Edited to ask how long this has been going on?

[seabeckind]

8. Contracting is useful in some cases

It provides a way to get a large pool of temporary labor to satisfy the occasional job.

The problems start happening when you contract your core functions. Only a person working for the agency and very much involved in the overall functioning of that agency, and accountable to that agency should be making decisions as to the extent of the contracting.

For example, the IT guy having a requirement to install a fiber link between 2 buildings on the campus would probably be better off contracting the job. That way he doesn't have to be able to have his staff proficient in the use of a backhoe, doesn't need to disrupt his normal ops to do lots of connections, etc.

And then when it's all complete and checked out, he makes the connection to the campus backbone...without the contractor.

I remember reading a critique of the outsourcing business that Boeing did. One of their engineers tried to point out that it wouldn't save money but end up costing much more during the integration phase.

Dreamliner.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110215

The CTO sould be making this decision, not the CFO.

[jeff47]

12. When you're talking about government contracting, there's another issue

Ease of turnover.

Government employees are difficult to lay off. So as technology changes, you can be stuck with employees who can not work with the "new" technology. For example, if all their Windows systems were replaced with Linux, they'll want to quickly switch their sysadmins. If those sysadmins are government employees, they can't. They have to try to retrain first, and that takes time.

So the government hires a lot of contractors for technology jobs for the purpose of being able to dump the contract employees when needs change.

[seabeckind]

15. The sysadmin position

is exactly the one you do NOT want to contract out. That is the one that makes sure the business operates with the minimum amount of problems, is not compromised, etc. Remember, the job Snowden had was as a sysadmin.

A lot of the jobs being done in the IT area require a knowledge of the business rules. Bringing someone in from the outside might help with the technology but totally fail at the business rules. There are lots of times where teaching a new technology is the easy part. Handling all the funny exceptions in these stupid laws some congresscritter thinks might be a good idea is the hard part.

Next, the implementation of a new technology doesn't mean the old technology goes away on day 1. I have a good friend who has been doing COBOL for a major insurance company forever. This company is very concerned that this guy might just decide to chuck it all and walk out the door. And there ain't a lot of COBOL IBM mainframers left around.

Next, the idea of running Linux on the mid-tier level is not new technology to the gov't. The incorporation of mid-tier Unix was done in the late 80s. The gov't was the driving force between TCP/IP and multi-tier implementations. Don't get the idea that contractors have a corner on technology. Far from it.

The problem has been that the beancounters started letting contracts to do the jobs that the gov't experts said couldn't be done the way the beancounters wanted them. So they went around the experts and, lo and behold!, the job couldn't be done that way.

Meanwhile, attrition lost the gov't expertise and now we have contractors taking up all the available space, costing 10 times the need, and failing in spite of it.

As I said...the last thing that should be turned over to a stranger is the keys to the wine cellar.

[jeff47]

19. Not saying it's a good plan. Just explaining the plan they are on. (nt)

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. The mall shooter and Snowden were cleared by the same contractor.

Isn't that interesting?

[ProgressiveJarhead]

10. All Private Contractors?

I work and sometimes this job is not easy. We do work for the DoD that they are not equipped to do. We do not work on weapons systems or classified material, but are required to get a clearance. My initial application as a contractor took over a year to complete. Everything was reviewed and there were two interviews. I answered every question truthfully including those about my one DWI over 10 years ago. They already know anyway. As long as the answers match what they already know, the clearance will be issued. Maybe the background check company that reviews our clearances is different from those you are familiar with.

Our wages are barely enough to live on. No raises this year and our 401K match is gone. We all work here and are mostly veterans and do quality work.

[joshcryer]

18. They're needed because it's being done by computers now.

And the need for a shit load of computers networked together to do the crunching is a monumental task. Maybe a few dozen people are actually writing the code, but there needs to be thousands building the networks.

There's also probably a bit of cronyism and nepotism in there too. I read that 75% of NSA work is contracted out to private contractors. That's way more than is necessary. It's the $10,000 toilet seat idea. Once you're in, you're in, and good to go.

[kelliekat44]

16. Meanwhile people trying to get a legitimate clearance are not able to do so because of credit report

That puts too much power in the hands of the private contractors doing the investigations. They can check political affiliations and only clear those whose political leanings match the powerful folks in control. That way, the trojans can be placed inside agencies and do just what Snowden and others did. People need to wake up. It's not so much about protecting the freedoms of people as it is destroying the government.

[melm00se]

24. it sounds like the USA is forgetting the

lessons that the British learned in the early/mid 20th century.

During this time, the British did what was called "negative vetting": basically they checked a bunch of lists (like membership in the GBCP) and if you weren't on any of those lists, you were cleared (for just about anything). This is one of the ways that the "Cambridge Five" (Kim Philby and his contemporaries slipped thru the cracks)

After a number of security breaches and scandals, the British moved over to "positive vetting" where they actively investigated the background and acquaintances of people seeking clearances.

While this seal all breaches, it drastically reduced them.

The positive vetting process was not without it's own issues. Certain institutional biases (mainly about homosexuals) blocked clearances for people who were otherwise worthy. Additionally, it drove people (like Alan Turing) deeper into the closet to avoid detection and loss of their clearances (and thus their livelihoods). It Turing's case, it eventually drove him to suicide.

[baldguy]

20. Explains how Ed Snowden happened.

[seabeckind]

22. Yes it does

Because the most important goal of the contractor is to get their man on the job.

Copied from a comment I made in the other thread on this topic:

Having a 3rd party doing the security check is a lot like having a home inspection prior to buying a property. If the inspector does a good job, oftentimes it will kill the sale. So the inspector tries to walk a fine line between losing subsequent business (being indentified as a deal killer is not a good thing in real estate) and doing an adequate job for the buyer.

And in a percentage of the cases the buyer will be screwed because the inspector will ignore a potentially serious issue.

In the case of a contractor trying to get their man on the job, oftentimes the guy is the cheapest they can find, barely competent to do the job, marginally responsible, and willing to be paid accordingly. Afterall, the contractor is going to bill that guy out at least 25% on top of what they pay him. And if any question arises as to his competence, the contractor will just use that as an excuse to get 3 more just like him on the job. (ref the new VA benefits computer system).

Once again we're stuck with that acceptable quality business, just like for anything we buy these days. The cheapest possible article that is workable. And it doesn't matter if it quits later. Cheaper for the provider to throw out a return...

or in this case for the customer to bear the burden. What's a few dead people when we're talkin bottom line here?

[DissidentVoice]

21. These are contracted out now?

When I had to get my security clearance for the Air Force, using the old DD Form 398 (which I still have), it was the DIS (Defence Investigative Service) who conducted it.

Maybe OPM just does it differently. I know that if I had lied on any aspect of my clearance, the hammer of the UCMJ would have crushed me to pulp.