The on-going saga of Edward Snowden, the leaker of top secret details regarding the functioning of the National Security Agency to the media, fills the news on a daily basis. What interests me most about this story is the realization of how the viability and value of a top secret security clearance has apparently been downgraded over the years.
In the late 1950’s, I was drafted into the US Army to serve two years on active duty. I was assigned to a job that required a top secret clearance, and this assignment triggered an intensive two-month search into my background by the FBI.
The FBI visited my hometown in Indiana where I lived through my high school years. They checked my school records, and interviewed numerous people in my neighborhood, some of whom barely even knew who I was.
They visited Upper Michigan where I went to college, interviewing professors and administrators in great detail.
They came to Coos Bay, where I had worked prior to being drafted into the military. Again, they intensively interviewed my employer, people in the community who had some knowledge of me, as well as retail establishments with whom I had some dealings (anybody remember Fithian’s Gun Store?).
I was issued the top secret security clearance, and I still marvel today at the depth, breadth, and intensity of the investigation leading up to its issuance.
Fast forward now to 2013.
Edward Snowden has been reported to be a high school dropout with a GED, he was said to have been enrolled in a community college but dropped out without completing a program of any sort, he joined the US Army but was granted a “administrative discharge” within six months of enlisting, and claimed to have pursued on-line educational programs of various sorts without documentation of successful completion. Certainly, with this sort of background, the FBI would be certain to conduct a very careful examination as to his suitability for a top secret clearance.
However, in 2013, the FBI, while still conducting investigations relating to its own potential employees or other special cases, is no longer in the business of routinely conducting background investigations leading to security clearances. Rather, this work is now done by those bastions of effectiveness and efficiency – private contractors. Currently, approximately 75% of all federal security checks are accomplished by three private companies who hold contracts with the Office of Personnel Management worth 2.4 billion dollars.
“You can’t outsource national security,” said Robert Baer, a former CIA veteran who worked in a succession of agency stations in the Mideast. “As long as we depend on the intel-industrial complex for vetting, we’re going to get more Snowdens.”
Ah, yes – the intel-military-energy-natural resource/industrial complex scores again!
The Reagan Revolution initiated and facilitated a steep downhill slide in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of governmental management agencies, and the bottom of the slope is not yet in sight. Must we wait for the catastrophic crash before we even attempt to change course?
