A big story that received little attention on Monday was
a report by Bloomberg News that the contractor that performed the background
check on Edward Snowden has repeatedly faced charges of fraud and submitting
false reports to the federal government, even claiming that they had vetted a
man who had been dead for a decade.
As federal officials and lawmakers scrutinize the vetting
process, they are learning that contractor-screeners are engaging in illegal activities
as they approve government job applicants
for security clearances.
Virginia-based USIS, a firm that conducts about half of
the background checks on federal employees, vetted Snowden and has also been at
the center of federal probes.
“The
process for granting security clearances across the federal government is
broken,” Sen.  Ron
Johnson of Wisconsin, the top Republican on a Senate panel
overseeing government contracting, told Bloomberg.
Some 20
background investigators have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of
falsifying reports since 2006, according to the Bloomberg story. Half of them
worked for companies such as Altegrity Inc., which performed the background
check on Snowden, the infamous national-security contractor who leaked
classified information to the press.
Bloomberg
is reporting that those 20 cases may represent a fraction of the fabrications
in a government vetting process with little oversight, according to lawmakers
and U.S. watchdog officials.
Passing
a “government” background check is a requirement before an employee or
contractor can be granted a security clearance to access classified
information. But the background checks are outsourced, conducted by contract
workers, not the government. The process has been under increasing scrutiny
since Snowden, a former NSA contractor who had worked for Virginia-based Booz Allen Hamilton , leaked secret documents and
then fled the country.
USIS,
the government’s No. 1 provider of such work with $253 million in contract awards
this year, is under investigation by an inspector general who has said there
may have been shortcomings in the company’s vetting of Snowden.
It appears that the age-old problems associated with privatization
and government contractors – emphasizing volume over quality, and cutting
corners to boost profits – is a recurring problem even with a basic service
such as providing security clearances.
Among
the 10 background-check workers employed by contractors who have been convicted
or pleaded guilty to falsifying records since 2006, eight of them had worked
for USIS, according to the inspector general for the U.S. Office of Personnel
Management. The personnel agency is responsible for about 90 percent of the
government’s background checks.
In
one case, a USIS screener admitted submitting 1,600 falsified reports to the
government regarding security clearances she had granted.
In
another case, Bloomberg reports, a 25-year-old contract worker conducting
background checks for the feds pleaded guilty in August 2009 to falsifying one
out of every three credit checks she performed during an 18-month period.
Demonstrating
just how widespread the problem is, investigators also discovered that the
screener who vetted the guilty woman and initially gave her a security
clearance so she could be hired also had been found guilty of fabrications in
the past and was convicted of fraud.
Patrick McFarland, inspector general for the personnel
office, told a Senate committee recently that his office lacks the funds needed to conduct thorough
probes.
There
may be “considerably more” botched background investigations, McFarland told
the senators. “I don’t believe that we’ve caught it all by any stretch.”