US Security Clearances

Demand for security clearances rose sharply in the United States after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The resulting backlog of applications led to an all-out effort to speed up the investigation process. High-profile failures to screen out leakers and other risks cast doubt on the reliability of the system. The number of investigations for security clearances multiplied ten times from 2001 to 2011. By 2004, the average time to complete a security clearance for a civilian employee increased to more than a year. The shortage of personnel with required clearances left key positions unfilled and encouraged employers to head-hunt prospects who already held security clearances. After 2005, the addition of more investigators and an online application form began to shorten processing times. In 2010, the Department of Defense met its goal of completing the investigation and adjudication of security clearances within sixty days. Then, while the system was showing significant progress on timeliness, two incidents in 2013 - leaks by Edward Snowden and a mass shooting at the Washington Naval Shipyard - raised questions about the quality of security clearance investigations. In both cases, the system for managing security clearances proved unresponsive to warning signs of an emerging security risk. By the 2020s, the process to receive security clearance took an average of three to four months to complete but could take up to a year. In 2023, the system was once again questioned when a low-ranking National Guardsman leaked classified documents onto the Internet.

Key Figures

• Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is responsible for performing the investigations for all security clearances, as requested by the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies.
• USIS, a private contractor, carried out more than half of OPM investigations, until 2014 when its contracts were not renewed due to fraud investigations and a cyber attack. Acquired in 2007 by Providence Equity Partners, USIS reportedly pressured investigators to close cases in time for end-of-month billing, amongst other scandals.

Key Events

• 2001 - Before the September 11 terrorist attacks, OPM processes 200,000 security clearances per year. By 2011, the average has risen to more than two million.
• 2005 - Average wait time for a security clearance is more than one year. The Government Accountability Office calls the situation "high risk," triggering a major effort to clear the backlog.
• 2009 -- Bradley Manning retains Top Secret clearance despite red-flag behaviors. In 2010, he transmits 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks.
• 2011 - Backlog and average processing times are reduced with the hiring of 75 percent more investigators (mostly outside contractors) and the introduction of the e-QIP application form.
• June 2013 - Leaks by Edward Snowden, a technician cleared for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence, make worldwide news, exposing National Security Agency surveillance of telephone and Internet traffic.
• September 2013 -- Twelve die at the Washington Navy Shipyard in a random shooting by Aaron Alexis, who held a Secret clearance despite multiple police reports of misuse of guns and psychological disturbance.
• 2014 - The Government suspends its contracts with USIS, which had previously handled most security clearance investigations.
• April 2023 - National Guardsman from Texas leaks classified documents online once again, bringing into question the security clearance process.

Status

As headlines proclaimed the security-clearance system was "broken," the US Senate passed the Security Clearance Oversight and Reform Enhancement (SCORE) Act in October 2013. The bill passed in the House of Representatives and became law, enabling the OPM inspector general to perform more audits of investigators' work.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs asked OPM to review its investigative work on Aaron Alexis and scheduled follow-up hearings in October 2013. Between 2005 and 2011, there were fourteen congressional hearings on the system for managing security clearances. However, the system continued to show problems, and, in 2023, was once again brought into question when a young National Guardsman was able to leak classified documents onto the Internet.

In-Depth Description

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the top official responsible for management of the 4.2 million security clearances issued by the United States government. The Federal Investigative Services office within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) carries out two million investigations per year for more than 100 federal agencies. In 2012, the cost of an investigation for a Secret clearance averaged several hundred dollars, while the cost of a Top Secret investigation averaged $3,000. Applicants for security clearances may include members of the armed services, civilian employees of the federal government, and employees of government contractors. Government agencies determine which employee positions require a security clearance using interim guidelines from OPM. The DNI developed a set of standards to be applied consistently by all agencies.

To obtain a security clearance, applicants fill out a form to provide information about their education, employment, affiliations, and personal history. The application form is forwarded to OPM, with a set of fingerprints and appropriate waivers, by a security officer of the requesting agency. The Department of Defense (DOD) is the number one source of investigation requests. OPM investigations for security clearances always include a credit check and a fingerprint check against criminal records, called a National Agency Check with Local Agency Checks and Credit Check (NACLC). The investigation for a Top Secret clearance also includes a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI), in which an investigator verifies details in the application and interviews people who know the applicant. A Top Secret investigation also includes a polygraph examination. When the investigation is complete, OPM sends a report back to the requesting agency for adjudication. The requesting agency decides whether to grant the security clearance based on results in the report and standard federal guidelines.

Having a clearance does not by itself enable access to classified information. Facilities that hold classified information allow access to specific areas based on a "need to know" associated with the individual's work. The security clearance holder receives a briefing on the rules for handling classified information and signs a nondisclosure agreement. If the classified information is stored in a Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence Facility (SCIF), employees must have an SCI clearance, which has the same requirements as a Top Secret clearance. Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden both held Top Secret/SCI clearances. When an individual's need to know comes to an end, they receive an exit briefing and sign the nondisclosure agreement again. At this point, although they no longer have access to classified information, their security clearance remains valid until the end of its term. A Secret clearance lasts ten years. A Top Secret clearance lasts five years.

Initiatives to Improve Efficiency

From 2005 through 2011, the federal government made a concerted effort to improve its system for managing security clearances. The issue became hot when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) cited DOD's application backlog as "high risk," prompting scrutiny by Congress and action by leaders at DOD, OPM, and other agencies.

Two changes helped to reduce investigation times significantly. First, OPM increased its number of investigators by 75 percent. Most of these were hired as outside contractors, and most worked for the private firm USIS. The second change was the introduction of the online application form e-QIP (Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing). The use of the automated form improved the completeness of initial submissions. Paradoxically, OPM still converted electronic submissions to paper documents for internal processing because some of its agency clients did not have the computer resources for receiving electronic reports.

In a 2010 audit, DOD met the goal of processing 90 percent of new security clearance applications within sixty days. The investigations by OPM exceeded the allotted forty days in two of three fiscal quarters. However, DOD was able to meet the overall sixty-day deadline by completing adjudications in less than twenty days. Similarly, Department of Energy applications overran the forty-day schedule for investigations but met the sixty-day goal by completing adjudications in less than twenty days. In contrast, it took the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice over 100 days to complete security clearance processing.

Despite the DOD improvement with respect to timeliness, GAO raised questions about the quality of security clearance investigations. In a separate study of Top Secret applications from 2008, GAO found that 87 percent lacked some of the required documentation - for example, verifications of education, employment, and past residences. In 22 percent of these cases, DOD adjudicators approved Top Secret clearances without requesting the missing information. To support quality assurance, DOD developed two sets of metrics: the Rapid Assessment of Incomplete Security Evaluations (RAISE) and the Review of Adjudication Documentation Accuracy and Rationales (RADAR). Other agencies do not use the DOD quality tools.

Gaps in the System

Missing documentation have been due to a refusal by employers or other sources to confirm information. However, fraud and negligence by investigators have also played a role. More than twenty investigators were convicted of making false statements in security clearance reports between 2005 and 2012. Eleven were OPM employees. Private contractors were linked in court records to more than 350 violations.

The contractor USIS, performing two-thirds of OPM's security clearance investigations, came under scrutiny by a federal grand jury in 2013 for allegedly pressuring employees to submit reports before all verifications could be completed. Supervisors instructed investigators to "flush" reports as monthly billing periods came to a close, according to a whistleblower inside the company. In general, the company encouraged fast and loose investigations through its use of an automated workflow management system that assigned cases in rapid succession with short deadlines. USIS fired a division president and a top financial officer in the wake of these charges. Later, in 2014, the USIS contracts were entirely suspended. USIS was responsible for the investigations of two notorious failures of the security clearance system: Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis.

Snowden - whose leaks caused "grave damage" to US intelligence capabilities, according to DNI James Clapper - showed signs of ambivalence toward government authority long before he disclosed National Security Agency (NSA) programs to The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers in 2013. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired him in 2007 as a computer security technician and issued a security clearance, although he was posting ominous warnings at the time on the Ars Technica website about government intrusions into Internet privacy. His CIA supervisor placed an unfavorable notation in Snowden's personnel file because he attempted to access information he was not cleared for, but this violation did not affect the renewal of his Top Secret clearance by the NSA.

Alexis received a Secret clearance on joining the Navy in 2007, possibly because the USIS report did not mention that he used a gun to deflate a neighbor's tires during an "anger-fueled" argument. Later incidents convinced his commander that Alexis should be discharged early from the Navy. However, these incidents did not affect the status of his Secret clearance, which allowed him to get a civilian job that enabled him access to the Washington Naval Shipyard. The case of Aaron Alexis, whose erratic state of mind was also documented by police and medical personnel, illustrates a weakness in the system with respect to updating information in security clearance files. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who sent 700,000 classified files to WikiLeaks, is another case in point. He retained his clearance despite a formal hearing for assaulting his supervisor and, a few months later, written notification to his superiors that he was in crisis about his sexual identity, a situation that was grounds for discharge at that time.

Responding to the Snowden debacle, NSA chief Keith Alexander announced that the agency would make a 90 percent reduction in its staff of 1,000 system administrators (one of Snowden's job titles), transferring their responsibilities to automated systems. Further, the NSA contemplated administrative changes that would require two people to be present for access to certain types of information. In the aftermath of the Washington Naval Shipyard shooting, the secretary of the Navy recommended to DOD that security clearance investigations include police reports even when formal charges are not filed. Decisions by civilian law enforcement not to press charges led to the omission of relevant evidence from Alexis's security clearance file.

In the 2020s, it once again takes three to four months to receive a security clearance and can take up to a year, depending on the type of clearance sought. However, problems continued to plague the system, as evident in April 2023 when a young National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, leaked classified information onto the Internet. This incident once again exposed flaws in the national security clearance system.

Bibliography

Farrell, Brenda S. PERSONNEL SECURITY CLEARANCES: Further Actions Needed to Improve the Process and Realize Efficiencies. GAO Report 13-728T. June 20, 2013. 13 p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=88409469&site=ehost-live

SECURITY CLEARANCES: Agencies Need Clearly Defined Policy for Determining Civilian Position Requirements. GAO Report 12-800. July 12, 2012. 54 p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=78038865&site=ehost-live

Dodaro, Gene L. PERSONNEL SECURITY CLEARANCES: Continuing Leadership and Attention Can Enhance Momentum Gained from Reform Effort. GAO Report 12-815T. June 21, 2012. 30 p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=77572539&site=ehost-live

Farrell, Brenda S. PERSONNEL SECURITY CLEARANCES: Overall Progress Has Been Made to Reform the Governmentwide Security Clearance Process. GAO Report 11-232T. December 1, 2010. 20 p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=55981416&site=ehost-live

McCausland, P. (2023, April 18). Does the Teixeira case mean the national security clearance system is broken? NBC News. Retrieved Oct. 9, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/teixeira-case-mean-national-security-clearance-system-broken-rcna80170

U.S. Intelligence community careers - security clearance process. (n.d.). Intelligence Careers. Retrieved Oct. 9, 2023, from https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/dhsia/security-clearance-process