National Security Clearances Are No Joke: Trump & Minions Must Be Held Accountable
At regular intervals, Diplomatic Security at the State Department unleashes a small horde of young Marines after hours on weekends to freely rummage through desks and work spaces in search of unfiled classified documents and related security violations. They leave a "pink slip" on the offender's desk informing them of the violation along with instructions to file a report with DS. One can either appeal, or gulp and take the heat. Get three pink slips within a certain space of time and they pull your security clearances. This is akin to a long distance truck driver having his driver's license yanked, or a lawyer temporarily disbarred. In other words, your career is toast - or close to it. Nothing to sneeze at.
The ongoing White House scandal over the willy-nilly granting of security clearances underscores the gravity of playing loose with the country's national security.
I got a dreaded pink slip the day after taking over the Afghanistan desk. I was the victim of my predecessor in the job, a misanthropic slob who had stuffed a confidential document in the top desk drawer. I appealed. And lost. Too bad, too sad said the sensitive and smileless George Smiley's in DS. "You own it. You pay." This kind of thing can make one defensive and paranoid. "Clean desk - Safe career" is the watch word. Three pink slips and you're out - in the dugout with the Baltimore Orioles. Needless to say, I kept that beaten up old GSA piece of furniture super clean during my two years futilely striving to bring freedom and democracy to the war-wracked Afghan people. The experience also gives one a new perspective on the Marines - Semper Fi assholes!
Throughout my nearly 25 years working in national security for Uncle Sam, I witnessed many cases of minor and major cases of security clearances denied or revoked.
As an intel analyst at the Pentagon, fresh out of college, a kindly loser in my office with huge debts suddenly did not show up for work one day. Like an "enemy of the people" in Stalin's Russia, he became a nonperson overnight. Security had revoked his clearances due to his financial difficulties. A couple of years later, as a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department on my second overseas posting in a communist country, a junior officer took up with a comely young East German woman. In a rush of unabated love, they got married. Along with the marriage certificate, our general services officer also got a one-way ticket back to D.C. - honeymoon not included - where, after pulling his clearances, the young officer was assigned to the mail room to sort, yes, the mail. A junior coms specialist at the same post took up and married a foreign military officer. She joined her colleague in the mail room. Both soon got the message and resigned. Same went for a young female diplomat at our (then) Interests Section in Havana. Fell head over heals for a charming and handsome Cuban man. Zip! End of career.
My second brush with the Smiley's in Diplomatic Security occurred when I was serving as DCM at our budding new embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the mid-'90s.
A fetching young Dutch UN peacekeeper caught my eye. There was something about the blue beret, the gouda-infused enthusiasm to bring Freedom and Democracy to the benighted Cambodians, her sacrificing her wooden shoes for jungle boots, her patriotic profile in a black one-piece swimsuit at the only pool in the country. Mother State becomes a mutant Junior Prom chaperone when it comes to one's love life and family affairs. You thought you shed parental oversight of your personal affairs once you hit your late teens. But once you take the oath and sign your soul away for that security clearance, be prepared to have your most intimate affairs become the business of Mother State.
Once my relationship with the Dutch peacekeeper became a steady one, the embassy's Regional Security Officer informed me that she needed to be "cleared," i.e., investigated and deemed not a security threat to the United States.
"Fill out this Form SF-86 and all these other forms," he told her.
She looked at me and asked, "Is this for real?"
"Yes, dear. It's only a formality."
"I've never dated anyone before whose employer required that I be investigated," she replied, not pleased. The 21-page SF-86 asks such questions as:
"Have you ever knowingly engaged in activities designed to overthrow the U.S. Government by force?"
"Have you ever knowingly engaged in any acts of terrorism?"
The RSO then interviewed her at length. Sheepishly and with unsteady nerves, she confessed to having demonstrated against short-range nuclear missiles in Europe when she was at the University of Leiden. The RSO gave her a pass for this crazy youthful act of anarchistic nihilism. He generously informed us that we could continue to see each other pending a background investigation of her life in the Netherlands.
We've been married now for 24 years.
For one particularly sensitive position, DS monitored my phone calls, finances and travel for months. I couldn't reveal to my family and friends my extended absences during official travel. My personal life was not my own.
The upshot is this: national security is not a joke. A handful of wayward scientists leaked our A-bomb secrets to the Soviets in the '40s. Aldrich Ames's and Robert Hanssen's betrayals caused the executions of dozens of courageous Russians working for us. They are serving life without parole in solitary for their treachery.
A brave woman in the White House's Personnel Security Office has blown the whistle on how the president and his senior officials have run roughshod over the clearance process. Some two-dozen Executive Office officials were denied clearances by the career security staff for reasons ranging from foreign entanglements to financial difficulties to criminal activity. One, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner had attempted to establish a secret back channel communications arrangement through the Russian embassy with that country's previous ambassador. Huh? Why? No problem, Ivanka's dad overruled the denial.
House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings has launched an investigation.
These actions, these people hired and cleared by this administration make a counterintelligence officer's hair light on fire. I would wager serious money that any number of hostile intelligence services have made major inroads into this nation's vault of national secrets as a result of this president's incompetence and hostility to his own government apparatus.
Make some space at Florence Supermax. New tenants will be arriving. The sooner, the better.