All posts tagged "National Counterintelligence And Security Center"

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....

When news broke that 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard airman Jack Teixeira leaked defense documents on the social network Discord, experts and concerned citizens alike began questioning who vetted this low-level service member who potentially caused grave damage to national security.

The Teixeira saga, which will likely play out for years to come across courtrooms, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, laid bare how a troubled young man with extremist tendencies needed only a computer and reliable home internet to disseminate government secrets.

But on a more fundamental level, Teixeira’s leaks represent just the dramatic, final failure of an enfeebled national security vetting system that struggles at times to track which employees have access to classified information at all....