White House looks for faster top-secret clearances(ZT)

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The White House is considering making it easier for people to obtain top-secret security clearances by eliminating some time-consuming background checks, says the Bush administration's point man on clearances.
The goal, says Clay Johnson III, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, is to speed up a process that, according to a series of government reports, wastes millions of dollars and endangers public safety by leaving thousands of defense, homeland security and intelligence jobs unfilled for more than a year.

Johnson plans to report to Congress today that the executive branch is making "significant progress" toward clearing a backlog of uncompleted clearance applications that government contractors and others say exceeds 350,000.

Three million federal workers now require security clearances for jobs ranging from routine computer system maintenance to sensitive analysis of spy satellite photos. All require at least a background check of personal and work history, foreign travel and finances. Top-secret clearance currently requires interviews with neighbors, references and current and former spouses.

A committee is considering eliminating interviews with neighbors and character references in cases where a candidate is cleared by other parts of the investigation, such as checks of criminal and financial records, Johnson says. "Do we really need to talk to five neighbors (of a candidate)? Do we really need all the colleges (the candidate attended)?" he asks.

Change 'overdue'

Clearances are "long overdue" for an overhaul, says Rep. Tom Davis, of Virginia, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Davis' district in the Washington suburbs includes thousands of government workers and contractors.

The delays in approving security clearances cost taxpayers "millions and millions," Davis says, as work goes undone and civilian contractors who already have clearances command higher salaries and big hiring bonuses.

Johnson's report today is required by a December 2004 intelligence-reform law that said 80% of clearance applications should be investigated, granted or rejected within 120 days.

Despite Johnson's claim of significant progress, contractors who supply workers for jobs that require clearances aren't seeing much improvement, says Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an industry group. Evan Lesser, whose website, ClearanceJobs.com, caters to workers with clearances, says the backlog of uncleared applications is about 350,000 — virtually unchanged over the past two years.

"The system continues to be something that needs adult supervision," Davis says.

David Alston agrees.

Alston, 47, an information specialist from Iselin, N.J., outside New York City, thought he had landed a job late last year working on an Air Force e-mail system.

Alston had experience in the system the Air Force used. He didn't, however, have a current security clearance. To get one would take a year or more, the Air Force contractor who posted the job told Alston. Sorry, the contractor said, he would keep looking.

"It's maddening, unbelievably frustrating," says Alston, who has found temporary work as a limousine driver. "There are a ton of good (government) jobs out there. But if you don't already have a clearance or unlimited time to get one, you can pretty much forget about it."

Contractors pay a premium for workers with current clearances, often offering higher salaries and signing bonuses. That can cost an extra $10,000 to $40,000 per employee per year, all of which gets passed on to taxpayers, Davis says.

Delays in clearances are harming national security, Davis says. As more government departments have hired private contractors to do added work after 9/11, delays often mean some jobs don't get done.

One Pentagon office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, has a more than 540-day backlog, according to a report filed last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Congressional and outside panels have criticized the agency, which analyzes images from spy satellites, for previous intelligence failures

Unless they bring a security clearance with them, contractors set to work for any agency also have to get in line. "There's no way (the backlog) doesn't impact on security," Davis says.

Outdated procedures

Critics of the clearance backlog say outdated security requirements are partly to blame.

World War II and Cold War-era rules still require extensive background checks for recruits who were born outside the USA or who have close family members overseas, says Tim Roemer, a Democratic former House member who was on the commission that studied pre-9/11 intelligence failures.

Those rules make it difficult for intelligence agencies to tap first-generation Americans with families in the Middle East, South Asia and other places where background checks are difficult, Roemer says.

"The intelligence community has to go from a risk-averse (clearance) system to a risk-management system," says Roemer, now president of the Center for National Policy in Washington.

The rush to clear the backlog, however, may be producing problems of its own.

Last year, the Government Accountability Office examined a random sample of 50 background investigations for top-secret clearances and found that 47 lacked one or more pieces of key documentation. In one case, investigators failed to pursue information suggesting that one applicant had had extramarital affairs and defaulted on "several thousand dollars" in loans.

In another case, an applicant who was known to have visited relatives "in an Asian country" was unable to supply their names or, in one case, a relative's home city. There was no record that the investigator followed up.