My first clearance was granted in 1986, and of course I had to list a number of people as references. Most of those people reported back to me that they had indeed been visited by Federal agents to confirm the information in my clearance application, including one who was a bit freaked out because he got his visit while he was tending his illegal marijuana farm. He said the Feds pretended not to notice and apparently did not report him.
Subsequently during my career I had to go through the process several more times at ten year intervals for what is called Periodic Reinvestigation. Because of the time intervals and my changing states of residence, the list of people I gave as references changed. None of the people I listed as references for the reinvestigations ever reported getting a visit. I found that odd.
Security procedures were changed by B. Clinton to little more than a phone call to a number supplied by the person needing the clearance. Likely helped facilitate the transfer of military secrets to the Chinese for “campaign” cash.
Related?
The CIA’s communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3727795/posts
2/14/2019, 1:58:52 PM · by detective · 43 replies
Yahoo News ^ | November 2, 2018 | Zach Dorfman and Jenna McLaughlin
In 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage. “When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence...
Close to 70 percent of operations at the time were potentially compromised, he noted. In other words, an entire class of CIA agents — those using some iteration of the online system — was in danger. “CIA is aware of this,” he wrote. “The design and maintenance of the system is flawed.” Reidy’s complaint wasn’t fully addressed for many years.
In 2008 — well before the Iranians had arrested any agents — a defense contractor named John Reidy, whose job it was to identify, contact and manage human sources for the CIA in Iran, had already sounded an alarm about a “massive intelligence failure” having to do with “communications” with sources.
throughout 2010 and 2011, the compromise continued to spread, and Reidy provided details to investigators. But by November 2011, Reidy was fired because of what his superiors said were conflicts of interest, as Reidy maintained his own side business. Reidy believed the real reason was retaliation.
DOJ charges former Air Force counterintelligence agent with spying for Iran http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3727614/posts
2/13/2019, 7:09:16 PM · by yesthatjallen · 24 replies
ABC News ^ | 02/13/19 | Luke Barr
The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it has charged a former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist with spying for Iran and helping that country target her former American colleagues. Monica Witt, 39, who was also a Defense Department contractor after leaving the U.S. government in 2008, sought to “undermine the U.S. and help the government of Iran,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu said on a call with reporters. Witt had been given high-level security clearances and had been deployed to the Middle East, prosecutors said
She was even warned by an FBI agent before her alleged 2013 defection that she was a “target for recruitment” by Iran.
The Iranian spying outreach occurred in the first half of 2015.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., allege that Witt disclosed a code-named intelligence program to Iranian government officials, one that contained “details of ongoing counterintelligence operations, true names of sources, and the identities of U.S. agents involved in the recruitment of those sources.”
And around late 2014, the indictment alleges, Witt worked with four Iranian “cyber conspirators” ordered to infiltrate the social networks and computer systems of Witt’s former intelligence colleagues.
.she entered a masters degree program around 2010, at George Washington University in the DC area....for Mid-East Studies
“She told her Bangladeshi interviewer that it was during her time at university she began to question Christianity and western materialism, and became active in the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.
Witt converted to Islam in a televised ceremony in 2012 on her first trip to Tehran, at the same time as a more high-profile convert, Sean Stone, the son of US film director Oliver Stone.
Witt and Stone were attending the same conference in Tehran, titled Hollywoodism, addressing the amorality of US movie culture, which had drawn a collection of western mavericks and conspiracy theorists.
Years later she told a Bangladeshi news network that after attending the conference, “I got a chance to think more about myself and the future.”
“These questions have drawn me to Islam: what is the main purpose of life and why we should live in the best way.”
According to a US Treasury statement on Wednesday, the organisers of the conference were closely tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and such events were intended to provide fertile ground for recruiting spies.
...the FBI seems to have been surprisingly relaxed in its view of the sudden turn in her life.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/14/monica-witt-from-us-intelligence-officer-to-alleged-iranian-spy
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