Comey, intelligence leakers and 4.3 million security clearances

It was a big week for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

On Thursday, we witnessed another congressional three-ring circus with Ex-FBI Director James Comey giving his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Some say he was rebuilding the FBI while trumping his case against his former boss, President Trump.

Earlier in the week, the FBI easily tracked down accused NSA leaker Reality Leigh Winner, 25.   Unlike Edward Snowden, who left the country after leaking classified documents, Winner hung out in her Georgia home until FBI Special Agent Justin Garrick strolled in and prompted a quick mea culpa.

What's crazy is, Winner has only been an employee of Pluribus International Corp., a security system supplier to the NSA in Virginia, since February. She already had a "top secret" clearance, despite tweeting and writing in her notebook phrases like "Being white is terrorism," "Donald Trump burns crosses" and "I want to burn the White House down." By May, just four months after being employed, she confessed that she was peddling classified materials and national secrets.

It got me to wonder how many others have top-secret clearances.

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According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, security clearances "correspond to the levels of sensitivity of the information that cleared individuals will be able to access."

The three basic areas of clearance are:

1. Top Secret – the unauthorized disclosure of that information would "cause exceptionally grave damage to national security."
2. Secret – the unauthorized disclosure of that information would "cause serious damage to national security."
3. Confidential – the unauthorized disclosure of that information would "cause damage to the national security."

An individual cannot initiate or obtain a security clearance on his or her own. Security clearances are issued by various government agencies: the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (DoD issues more than 80 percent of all clearances.)

Security clearances are not required for the president, vice president, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices or other constitutional officers. In addition, as the commander in chief, the president has the authority to establish the standards of access to classified national security information, largely through executive orders.

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According to the Federation of American Scientists, as of September 2015, the total number of security-cleared persons government-wide is around 4.3 million, down from 5.1 million in 2013. (Does it make you wonder what happened to the 800,000 who are no longer security-cleared, and who tracks them?)

There were 3.8 million DoD employees and contractors with security clearances, down from 4.6 million two years earlier. (Does that make you wonder what happened to the 1.2 million who are no longer security-cleared, and who tracks them?) Right now, 2.2 million people have access to classified information.

Even the highest classified top-secret clearances are not that rare, according to an October 2016 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Bart Jansen, who covers the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and Congress, reported last week in a USA Today article that of the 4.3 million security-cleared government personnel, "These included nearly 2.9 million people at the 'confidential' or 'secret; level and nearly 1.4 million at the 'top secret' level."

So, how well are the "top-secret" clearance personnel monitored? Not so well.

The DoD missed a December 2014 milestone to provide "continuous evaluation" of the most sensitive top secret-cleared population. In pursuit of doing better, it made a goal of "continuous evaluation" of 100,000 in 2014, 225,000 in 2015, 500,000 in 2016 and one million in 2017.

It only takes fourth-grade math skills to see the multitude of porous holes in intelligence monitoring.

An additional problem that Jansen explained is: "Security clearances don't expire, particularly if a worker continues to deal with secret information. The Pentagon typically conducts a renewal investigation of people with top-secret clearances every five years, for secret every 10 years, and for confidential every 15 years."

The problem there is clearly seen in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's 2015 "Security Clearance Determinations," which reported that processing times for clearance applications were severely bogged down by three factors: 1) "increase demand of resources due to the backlog of periodic reinvestigations"; 2) "delays due to the OPM [Office of Personnel Management] breech and the temporary shutdown of e-QIP system, which is used to apply for security clearance; 3) "OPM's loss of a major contract investigative service provider."

It makes one also wonder just how effectively and carefully they could approve the 638,679 clearances that they did approve in 2015, including 230,417 at the top-secret level!

Jansen also reported: "In 2013, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered a review of how the military reviews clearances for troops and civilian employees after a Navy contractor, Aaron Alexis, shot 12 civilians to death at the Washington Navy Yard office complex before he was killed by police. Alexis had held a security clearance since 2008, after he enlisted in the Navy Reserve. That clearance gave him access to the Washington Navy Yard."

A Pentagon statement on clearances explains, "Only those persons who have a bona fide need-to-know and who possess a personnel security clearance at the same or higher level as the classified information to be disclosed may have access to classified information."

Looks to me that our government has another overly liberal, unaccountable, run-amok distribution. But this time, it's concerning security clearances based in the government's subjective and erroneous definition of "bona fide need-to-know." It is clear that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

The only immediate solution to reduce the risks of more national security breaches is to reduce the number of clearances, especially among hundreds of thousands if not millions who really don't need them, and probably shouldn't have them.

A 2016 CIA report, "Time to Clear Out Security Clearances," recommends that it will "try to reduce by 10 percent the 4.3 million security clearances now held by employees of the military-industrial complex. Better late than never. A good place to start would be the million-plus people who are employed by defense contractors."

I'm sure Warren Buffet spoke these words about investments, but I think they could apply to our present government: "Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

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