All posts tagged "Mark Frownfelter"

At the dawn of former President Donald Trump’s administration, government employees and contractors in need of security clearances could wait years for approval. Federal agencies stared down a backlog of 700,000 clearance investigations starting in 2017.

For one former senior-level State Department employee, who is a person of color, they waited more than two years to get approved for a top secret clearance.

When the Trump administration arrived, many new Trump officials received “interim security clearances” because they didn’t initially meet standard security requirements, the former employee told Raw Story. This contributed to a screening backlog. ...

“High-risk.”

That’s how the U.S. Government Accountability Office — an internal watchdog for the federal government — has classified the nation’s security clearance vetting process for the past five years.

The latest report to Congress dropped amid several national security threats from current and former government employees this year alone: 21-year-old airman Jack Teixeira leaked defense documents on a gaming social media site; a jailed neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet allegedly saved classified materials on his computer; a former FBI analyst was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for retaining defense documents in her home....