The outbreak of comity in the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, often a sharply partisan
place, means the government’s security-clearance process is in for significant
changes.
Democrats and Republicans on
the committee are united by an urgency to fix a system that was not able to
stop Aaron Alexis’s September rampage. He was a defense contractor with a
security clearance who attacked his Washington Navy Yard workplace, killing 12
before being shot to death by police.
What the committee members and
their colleagues in Congress decide could have major impact on the nearly 5
million employees and contractors who are eligible for security clearances.
Areas of agreement, in
principle if not detail, include the continuous monitoring of
security-clearance holders through databases, securing better cooperation from
local law enforcement and greater use of social media in background investigations.
The bipartisan desire to fix
the system, however, does not extend to all remedies or even diagnoses.
Republicans object to taking security-clearance checks from private
contractors, who now do 70 percent of that work, and returning it to federal
investigators. They also tend to focus their criticisms on government rather
than private contractors,
including a big one facing serious Justice Department allegations for ailments
in the system.
No matter who does
investigations, Republicans and Democrats think employees should be checked
more often.
Cleared individuals now go
years, perhaps too many, without a security reevaluation. Those with “secret”
clearance, like Alexis, are reinvestigated every 10 years. It’s five years for
“top secret” holders.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton
(D-D.C.) said she can’t understand how Alexis could have “a security clearance
that enabled him to go through 10 years without review.”
“Even the most stable person
has incidents in his life . . . that in a decade” could affect his ability to
handle Uncle Sam’s secrets, she said.
“Where did the 10-year period
come from?” she asked witnesses during a committee hearing last week. Office of
Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta, OPM Inspector General
Patrick McFarland and Stephen Lewis, a deputy director in the Defense
Department, had no answer. OPM oversees the background-check program. Lewis
said the 10-year reevaluation will move “to a five-year recurring review, and
we do believe that continuous evaluation, ongoing reviews of available records,
should occur as well.”
Republicans praised Norton’s
“excellent line of questioning.”
Discussion related to
legislation introduced by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) was also an example
of cross-aisle cooperation. Lynch proposes withholding federal funds from local
police agencies that do not fully cooperate with federal background
investigators. The Republican chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), said “the
committee has been working on a completely bipartisan basis” toward legislation
that includes some of Lynch’s provisions.
Bipartisanship has its limits.
Democrats want government
employees to do a greater share of the background checks.
Because of allegations of
corruption in security clearance contracting, “it is imperative that we bring
key background investigative work back into the federal government,” Lynch
said. “My legislation will ensure that federal employees, rather than outside
contractors, perform critical investigative functions, including top secret
clearance level investigations.”
A Democratic staff report
issued by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D- Md.) said, “Congress also should
reconsider the extent to which outsourcing critical investigative functions may
impact national security.”
Having federal law enforcement
personnel do all the checks could improve the cooperation needed from local
police officials.
As a report issued by Issa
notes, more than 450 local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate fully with
security clearance investigators.
“Unfortunately, some of the
country’s largest local law enforcement agencies . . . are on that list,” says
the Republican staff report. “The Newark Police Department is on the list, with
a note that says, ‘Will not fulfill any requests other than for law enforcement
agencies.’ ” Newark police did not respond to a request for comment.
A D.C. police spokeswoman told
my colleague Ernesto Londoño that city law prohibits police from sharing law
enforcement information with civilians. At the hearing, however, Archuleta said
D.C. police recently agreed to provide information to investigators.
The lack of cooperation cited
in Issa’s report does not convince him that federal employees should do all the
checks.
“I want to be a little careful
not to rush to bring everything in-house,” Issa said, “when in fact, we’re not
very good in the federal government at increasing or reducing workloads” as
easily as private companies can.
But the reputation of private
companies has been damaged. Cummings’s report focused on USIS (U.S.
Investigations Services), a Falls Church firm facing Justice Department
allegations that it failed to do required quality-control reviews. USIS does
about half of the government’s background probes, including the one on Alexis.
About 40 percent of its work over a period of more than four years is in
question.
As part of OPM’s reform
efforts, Archuleta announced this month that private companies will no longer
do their own quality-control reviews.
Noting that he was not
employed by USIS during the period under scrutiny, Sterling Phillips, the
firm’s chief executive since January 2013, tried to minimize the allegations,
saying they “relate to a small group of individuals over a specific time period
and are inconsistent with our values and strong record of customer service.”
But it’s a big deal to the
Justice Department and to Congress.
Justice is “seeking more than
$1 billion from USIS, claiming that the company charged taxpayers for work it
never performed on — ladies and gentlemen, listen to this, on 665,000
background investigations from 2008 to 2012,” Cummings told the hearing.
“We are better than that.”
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