Free Republic

During a statement on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that the White House’s statement that President Trump is looking to revoke former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance as well as examining the clearances of several other former officials is “exactly what you see in authoritarian regimes.” Schiff said, “Today’s action, suggesting that we will punish critics of the president by stripping them of their security clearance, that is not what you see in a democracy. That is exactly what you see in authoritarian regimes.” He added that the move is a “despicable action…to...

The Defense Department is poised to take over background investigations for the federal government, using increased automation and high-tech analysis to tighten controls and tackle an enormous backlog of workers waiting for security clearances, according to U.S. officials. The change aims to fix a system whose weaknesses were exposed by the case of a Navy contractor who gunned down a dozen people at Washington's Navy Yard in 2013. He was able to maintain a security clearance despite concerns about his mental health and an arrest that investigators never reviewed. Problems had earlier surfaced with former National Security Agency contractor Edward...

TruePundit: FBI: Awans Security Clearances “Forged;” Granted Access to Congressional Intel Despite Falsified Vetting Federal law enforcement agents working the Imran Awan and Hina Alvi fraud probe said the couple, along with other members of the family, were never properly vetted for Congressional security clearances. Instead the clearances, which provided the Awans access to dozens of Congressional Democrats computer networks and IT systems, were likely approved absent each individual background file getting “fully investigated.” “I seriously doubt they could have passed a full background (check),” one FBI insider said. “These clearances were pushed through.” FBI insiders used the word...

McClatchyDC:Buried in backlog, Feds give top-secret clearances to murderers, rapistsWASHINGTON Under a crushing backlog in the issuing or renewing of security clearances, federal authorities have given interim clearances to people they later discovered were murderers and pedophiles, a senior government official said Wednesday. “This is very, very dangerous,” said Daniel E. Payne, head of the Defense Security Service, a federal office that oversees the granting of temporary clearances. Payne said roughly 100,000 people hold interim clearances while working for companies with Defense Department contracts or at 13,000 cleared facilities and plants around the country and as they await a...

The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides. Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.

In less than two weeks, the Office of Personnel Management is expected to launch the new background investigation service to help fix the mess created by a series of incidents ranging from a lack of contractor oversight to the massive data breach affecting 21.5 million current and former federal employees. Officials promise the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) will be a much different organization than its predecessor, the Federal Investigative Services. “It will have a politically appointed director, will be headquartered in D.C. and be a full member of the Performance Accountability Council, so it aligns with customers for increased...

There is a major probe going on into the breach of Congressional computer security, surrounding three Pakistani brothers who served as IT staff for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Oh, you haven’t heard about this in the media? The three brothers were locked out of U.S. House computer networks as part of the probe, but now we’re learning that one of the staffers allegedly had the user name and password for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s iPad, and by extension had access to her DNC emails. If you recall, Wasserman-Schultz was the Chair of the Democratic National Committee whose...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is blaming an exhaustive White House vetting process for the fact that the Obama administration has not yet named a person to run the U.S. Agency for International Development. Six months into the administration's tenure without having appointed someone to the agency's top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous."

FBI investigation into Democratic presidential front-runner expands its reach Tasked with digging into the security of Hillary’s home brewed email server, the FBI investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is expanding it’s reach. A local CBS News affiliate reports the Denver based Platte River Networks received a visit from the FBI last week regarding former Secretary Clinton’s email. Platte River Networks handled the Clinton’s email accounts though there’s been no public explanation as to what that entailed. It’s been confirmed by both the intelligence community and the office of the Inspector General that classified information was transmitted through...

Alarm over the growth of the national security state seems to wane among liberals when Democrats are in the White House but the sheer magnitude of the enterprise should be of concern to all no matter which party is in nominal control of the executive branch. When Thomas Jefferson was president, “the entire executive branch consisted of 132 people,” Michael Glennon, a law professor at Tufts University, said recently at the Cato Institute. “The White House staff consisted of one person: Jefferson’s personal secretary.” Today, on the national security side alone, “This little apparatus that Truman set up consists of...

Back in October 2011 Congressman Louis Gohmert (R-TX) questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a high level security clearance who allegedly accessed, illegally from his home computer, a Texas State and Local Intelligence Community database. Napolitano denied knowing anything about it, and told Gohmert she would personally do the investigation. See the video below. Gohmert charged that Elibiary shopped information marked For Official Use Only, [classified] about Texas Governor Rick Perry and other Texas officials, to a left-leaning media outlet. See my original article from January 2012 for...

How perplexing it is that the leader of the free world and possessor of the nuke codes is not required to have a national security clearance. An Army private who may come into contact with classified documents must be cleared. The Commander in Chief is exempt from any such scrutiny. The president also decides who within his administration should be cleared and at what level. In 1995, Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12958-Classified National Security Information, as Amended. To no one’s astonishment, Clinton amended the previous order to facilitate the declassification of information. With emblematic liberal disregard for threats to...

A federal judge blocked the government from conducting background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after an appeals court said the investigations threatened the constitutional rights of workers. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright issued the injunction Friday after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his earlier ruling and issued a sharp rebuke to the judge. The higher court said the 28 scientists and engineers who refused to submit to the background checks faced "a stark choice -- either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs." The workers sued the federal government, claiming...

Pentagon denying Israelis security clearances New York Sun reports State Department citing AIPAC leak case as basis for denying employees with dual Israeli-American citizenship security clearances. In one case, government lawyers argued Israel was 'actively spying on United States' to justify withdrawing clearance from worker Ynetnews The Pentagon is citing a leak affair involving Defense Department analyst Lawrence Franklin and two pro-Israel lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, as a basis for stripping security clearances from government contractor employees who have dual Israeli-American citizenship or family in Israel, The New York Sun reported Wednesday. The two former AIPAC officials and...

While the media has obsessed over two high-profile cases in recent months involving improper handling of classified information, communications involving terrorists have been getting translated by people without any security clearances—and there’s been nary a whimper from most of the Washington press corps. There are 119 inmates in the federal prison system with “specific ties” to international Islamic terrorist organizations, and almost all of them are able to communicate with the outside world through phone calls and letters. (Full disclosure: this journalist broke the story on the front page of the Washington Times two weeks ago.) Not only did the...