Convicts' access creates security risk

By PHILIP GAILEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 14, 2000

As Dave Barry likes to say, I'm not making this up. Dozens of convicted felons -- murderers, drug abusers, sex offenders, tax evaders and people who have defrauded the military -- have gained government security clearance, giving them access to sensitive classified information that is off-limits to most law-abiding Americans.

USA Today investigative reporter Edward T. Pound reported last December that a review of more than 1,500 security clearances at the Department of Defense shows that a little-known Pentagon agency "regularly grants clearances to employees of defense contractors who have long histories of financial problems, drug use, alcoholism, sexual misconduct or criminal activity."

I knew that job market was tight, but I didn't realize defense companies have been forced to recruit workers from the criminal class. There is something wrong with this picture.

One 42-year-old defense company employee who gained a security clearance is a convicted murderer who remains on parole until 2006. Other defense industry employees were granted clearances despite criminal convictions for sexual misconduct, bank fraud and tax evasion. One man who participated in a scheme to defraud the Navy of $2-million was allowed to keep his security clearance. Administrative Judge John Erck ruled that although the applicant's role in the fraud scheme amounted to "serious criminal activity," he was "impressed" with the man's "honesty and sincerity."

Erck is one of 15 administrative judges at the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA), a tiny Pentagon agency that decides whether to grant or deny clearances to defense company employees. They rule in cases where applicants challenge preliminary decisions denying them access to classified information. DOHA didn't start out as a clearinghouse for criminals seeking to work in the world of government secrets. The quasi-judicial agency grew out of the Communist witchhunt of the McCarthy era. President Eisenhower created the DOHA process by executive order after the Supreme Court ruled that government contract employees had the right to a hearing if their security clearances were challenged.

Since those days, however, DOHA has strayed far from its original mission, according to some Defense Department officials. Edwin Forrest, executive director of the Navy's Personnel Security Appeal Board, told Pound: "To be honest with you, I think DOHA often finds in favor of the individuals and not national security. What we see coming from DOHA are decisions that go outside the envelope -- outside the adjudicative guidelines."

Pound quoted Howard Strouse, a former senior DOHA official who retired more than a year ago, as saying, "Any American who looked at these DOHA decisions would be horrified. To know that we are giving clearances to some of these people is just intolerable."

DOHA's administrative judges obviously believe in redemption and rehabilitation. And that's fair enough as long as they exercise sound judgment and don't put national security at risk. People do change, and when they do, they deserve a second chance. No one should want to deny them employment. But we're talking about entrusting classified information to people who have a history of breaking the law. Shouldn't that be a major concern in deciding whether to give them access to secrets that foreign governments and companies would like to get their hands on? Sometimes the DOHA judges sound more like psychiatrists and social workers than a security watchdog in explaining their decisions.

Consider the case of a 53-year-old owner of a defense contracting company with a long history of violent altercations. This man bulldozed a car blocking his exit from a parking lot. After a state court judge ruled against him in a civil lawsuit, the man exploded in the courtroom and police had to be called in to arrest him. This same contractor left a threatening message on his ex-wife's answering machine and advised her he had a "shotgun and two Uzis" and was coming to her house to get his son. Police arrested him when he arrived and he was jailed on an assault conviction.

"There is an obvious nexus between the applicant's criminal conduct and the national security," administrative Judge Erck wrote in his decision. "An individual who repeatedly loses his temper and breaks the law is much more likely to violate security rules and regulations." That makes sense to me. So why did Erck rule that this man should be granted clearance? The judge found the applicant to be a "changed man" because the guy had become active in his church and was learning to control his temper.

No wonder John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for hearings.

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