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“U‑2, Brut?” Part II: Eddie the Friendly Spook Hits the Trifecta (Updated)

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ June 23, 2013Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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COMMENT: In the third of our posts on “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we reit­er­at­ed and fur­ther devel­oped the com­par­i­son between Snow­den’s activ­i­ties and the down­ing of Fran­cis Gary Pow­ers’ U‑2 spy plane on the eve of an impor­tant sum­mit con­fer­ence between then Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er and Sovi­et Pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev.

In the Guns of Novem­ber, Part I (record­ed on 11/1/1983), we ana­lyzed evi­dence that the spy plane was delib­er­ate­ly sab­o­taged in order to frus­trate the Eisenhower/Khruschev efforts at detente. (Irate over the inci­dent, Khr­uschev can­celled the sum­mit con­fer­ence. The down­ing of the U‑2 inci­dent was blamed on infor­ma­tion sup­pos­ed­ly leaked to the U.S.S.R. by Lee Har­vey Oswald.)

As the actions of Baby Face Snow­den take shape, our analy­sis of this as “U‑2, II” becomes more cred­i­ble.

After decamp­ing to Hong Kong and leak­ing infor­ma­tion about anti-Chi­nese U.S. hack­ing pro­grams on the eve of Oba­ma’s sum­mit with Chi­nese pre­mier Xi, Snow­den leaks infor­ma­tion on NSA spy­ing on Ger­many on the eve of Oba­ma’s trip to Ger­many to meet with Merkel.

Imme­di­ate­ly AFTER Oba­ma’s meet­ing with Vladimir Putin, Snow­den decamps to Moscow, there­by plac­ing fur­ther strain on Oba­ma’s diplo­mat­ic efforts and for­eign pol­i­cy. Oba­ma’s goal of “reboot­ing” rela­tions with Moscow will suf­fer as a result. 

Even­tu­al­ly, Snow­den’s efforts led to the can­cel­ing of Oba­ma’s planned sum­mit con­fer­ence with Vladimir Putin (update). (See text excerpts below.)

As Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry not­ed, we can safe­ly con­clude that Snow­den’s trips to Chi­na and Rus­sia were not under­tak­en because either coun­try is a citadel of polit­i­cal free­dom and expres­sion, but rather to dam­age Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy. (See text excerpts below.)

The Snow­den op also appears to be aimed at alien­at­ing ide­al­is­tic and less sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­ers from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. 

We note, in this con­text, who has han­dled much of Wik­iLeaks’ Russ­ian oper­a­tions–Joran Jer­mas (“Israel Shamir”)–Assange’s Holo­caust-deny­ing pal and the per­son who con­nect­ed Wik­iLeaks with Nazi finan­cial angel Lund­strom’s milieu. (See text excerpt below.)

In pass­ing, we also note that Ecuador and the Cor­rea gov­ern­ment, which has shel­tered Assange and is appar­ent­ly mov­ing to shel­ter Snow­den as well, have strong links to Ger­many and the EU. In a recent vis­it, Merkel was nego­ti­at­ing with Cor­rea for clos­er ties between Ger­many, Ecuador and the EU. (See text excerpt below. In this regard, we must remem­ber that the Ger­man econ­o­my is gov­erned by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.)

He has hit the Tri­fec­ta and that is almost cer­tain­ly by design. This is a spook oper­a­tion, clear­ly. This should come as no sur­prise giv­en Snow­den’s background–Alphabet Soup from day one.

We still have ques­tions about this imbroglio, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty Eddie the Friend­ly Spook may be doing some CIA sab­o­tag­ing of NSA, as well as the only-too-obvi­ous evi­dence that he is doing his utmost to under­mine Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy.

In this con­text, we won­der about Michael J. Mor­rel­l’s res­ig­na­tion right in the mid­dle of this affair.

Please exam­ine at length and detail our pre­vi­ous posts on this “op.”

As with the far-right, Nazi-linked Wik­iLeaks oper­a­tion, fol­low the mon­ey. Snow­den con­tributed mon­ey to Nazi/White Suprema­cist Ron Paul’s cam­paign, which was financed by Peter Thiel, the uber-reac­tionary whose Palan­tir firm can be safe­ly deduced as hav­ing devel­oped the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy. A good treat­ment of Thiel’s back­ground is to be found in FTR #718. Thiel is so far to the right that he has stat­ed that he no longer believes in democ­ra­cy, in part because we should not have allowed women to vote.

NOTE: Palan­tir offi­cial­ly claims that “their PRISM” is NOT the same PRISM in the focal point of the Snowden/NSA imbroglio. We feel this claim is laugh­able, frankly. The notion that the intel­li­gence ser­vices are using TWO counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­grams with iden­ti­cal names is not cred­i­ble. Had a com­pa­ny devel­oped a counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­gram for use by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and called it “PRISM,” there would have been lit­i­ga­tion. The major tech com­pa­nies are NOTHING if not liti­gious, and Thiel and com­pa­ny have PLENTY of mon­ey!

(Although many of the naifs seduced by the Paul cam­paign aren’t fas­cists, we are oblig­ed to hold Eddie the Friend­ly Spook to a high­er crit­i­cal stan­dard. If Baby Face Snow­den is so omni­scient, how come he can’t fig­ure out his pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice is a Nazi. THAT is hard­ly a state secret.)

We’ve also not­ed that Glenn Green­wald, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s leak­er of choice, also net­worked with the Koch Broth­ers’ Cato Insti­tute, with which Thiel also works. Saint Green­wald, by the way, has a back­ground work­ing as a lawyer work­ing for high-priced cor­po­rate clients.

When one exam­ines the Wik­iLeaks net­work, one finds the same forces at work. The Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel, as we have termed Wik­iLeaks’ foot sol­diers are, for the most part, “anarcho/Utopian” in their polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. 

They are absolute­ly clue­less, how­ev­er, when it comes to dis­cernible polit­i­cal real­i­ty. The “Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty” crowd has­n’t even fig­ured out their “own thing,” so to speak. The Pirate Bay oper­a­tion, on whose servers Wik­iLeaks’ activ­i­ties were based, is financed by Nazi mon­ey man Carl Lund­strom.  Wik­iLeaks’ con­nec­tion with Lund­strom’s cadre is no acci­dent either. 

Assange’s con­nec­tion to Lund­strom was effect­ed by Joran Jer­mas (“Israel Shamir”), the Wik­iLeaks’ founder’s long-stand­ing Holo­caust-deny­ing ally. Both Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks Nazi finan­cial angel Lund­strom and Ron Paul have net­worked with David Duke in the past.

As some­thing of an amus­ing aside, we find it more than a lit­tle enter­tain­ing that the “Free­tards” are alarmed that NSA/GCHQ is vac­u­um clean­ing communications–something that has been on the pub­lic record for many years and an activ­i­ty that is con­duct­ed by oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing Ger­many.

NSA, et al, is indeed mon­i­tor­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions on a mas­sive scale. They are not like­ly to take action against the aver­age cit­i­zen, how­ev­er.

Wik­iLeaks, on the oth­er hand, part­nered with the Russ­ian “phish­ing mafia”! They are the folks who will use the Inter­net to hack your e‑mails, steal your iden­ti­ty, emp­ty your bank account and max-out all your cred­it cards. I guess the sup­port­ers of Wik­iLeaks and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook are OK with that!

There is an old say­ing: “Count your but­tons before doing them up.” it cer­tain­ly applies to the Pirate Bay/Pirate Party/Anonymous folks and it also applies to the Chi­nese, Rus­sians, Ecuado­rans and any­one and every­one else who wants to give assis­tance or shel­ter to Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.

He is a pro­fes­sion­al intel­li­gence offi­cer on a mis­sion. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that he might be work­ing to spy on the Chi­nese, Rus­sians, Ecuado­rans, Ice­landers, Wik­iLeak­ers is one to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered.

To ful­ly acquaint your­selves with the argu­ments being devel­oped in con­nec­tion with Eddie the Friend­ly Spook, PLEASE exam­ine at length our pre­vi­ous posts on the sub­ject, as well as fol­low­ing the links in those arti­cles: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

“Snow­den, in Rus­sia, Said to Seek Asy­lum in Ecuador” by Ellen Bar­ry and Kei­th Brad­sh­er; The New York Times; 6/23/2013.

EXCERPT: Edward J. Snow­den, the fugi­tive for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor want­ed by the Unit­ed States for leak­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments, foiled his Amer­i­can pur­suers on Sun­day by flee­ing a Hong Kong hide-out for Moscow aboard a com­mer­cial Russ­ian jet­lin­er, in what appeared to be the first step in an odyssey to seek polit­i­cal asy­lum in Ecuador.

It was a day of frus­trat­ed scram­bling by Amer­i­can offi­cials, who have been seek­ing Mr. Snowden’s extra­di­tion and had annulled his pass­port a day before he left Hong Kong as part of an effort to thwart his escape. The author­i­ties in Hong Kong said they lacked com­plete infor­ma­tion to pre­vent his depar­ture.

Mr. Snow­den board­ed an Aeroflot jet­lin­er that reached Moscow on Sun­day after­noon. Russ­ian news agen­cies said Mr. Snow­den was in a tran­sit area, and Ecuador embassy offi­cials, includ­ing the ambas­sador, were seen at the air­port into the ear­ly hours of Mon­day.

Ecuador’s gov­ern­ment and Wik­iLeaks, the orga­ni­za­tion that expos­es gov­ern­ment secrets and has come to the assis­tance of Mr. Snow­den, appeared to have played a crit­i­cal role in help­ing spir­it him away from Hong Kong.

Ecuador’s for­eign min­is­ter said that Mr. Snow­den had sub­mit­ted a request for asy­lum. In a state­ment on its Web site, Wik­iLeaks said, “he is bound for the Repub­lic of Ecuador via a safe route for the pur­pos­es of asy­lum, and is being escort­ed by diplo­mats and legal advi­sors from Wik­iLeaks.”

The founder of Wik­iLeaks, Julian Assange, who has resided in Ecuador’s Lon­don embassy for a year because of his own fugi­tive sta­tus, said in an inter­view that his group had arranged for Mr. Snow­den to trav­el via a “spe­cial refugee trav­el doc­u­ment” issued by Ecuador last Mon­day — days before the Unit­ed States announced the crim­i­nal charges against him and revoked his pass­port. . . .

“Oba­ma Can­cels Putin Sum­mit amid Snow­den Ten­sions” by Matthew Lee and Deb Riech­mann [AP]; Yahoo News; 8/7/2013.

EXCERPT: Already fal­ter­ing, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s five-year effort to reboot U.S.-Russian rela­tions final­ly crashed Wednes­day, as the White House abrupt­ly can­celed his planned face-to-face sum­mit with Rus­si­a’s Vladimir Putin.

The effort to upgrade the rela­tion­ship has fall­en vic­tim to the rapid­ly shrink­ing com­mon ground between the for­mer Cold War rivals, includ­ing extreme dif­fer­ences over the Syr­i­an civ­il war, Rus­si­a’s domes­tic crack­down on civ­il rights and — the final straw — the asy­lum grant­ed to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency leak­er Edward Snow­den. . . .

“Assange’s Extrem­ist Employ­ees: Why is Wik­iLeaks employ­ing a Holo­caust Denier and his dis­graced son?” by Michael C. Moyni­han; Rea­son Mag­a­zine; 12/14/2010.

EXCERPT: . . . Accord­ing to reports in the Swedish and Russ­ian media, the broad strokes of which have been con­firmed by a Wik­iLeaks spokesman, Shamir serves as the group’s con­tent aggre­ga­tor in Rus­sia, the man who “selects and dis­trib­utes” the cables to Russ­ian news orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion by Swedish pub­lic radio. In the news­pa­per Expressen, Mag­nus Ljung­gren, an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture at Gothen­burg Uni­ver­si­ty, out­lined Shamir’s close ties to Wik­iLeaks and his posi­tion “spread­ing the doc­u­ments in Rus­sia.” (The arti­cle is illus­trat­ed with a pic­ture of Assange and Shamir in an uniden­ti­fied office.)

. . . . The Swedish media has iden­ti­fied Shamir’s son, a dis­graced jour­nal­ist named Johannes Wahlström, him­self accused of anti-Semi­tism and fal­si­fy­ing quotes, as a Wik­iLeaks spokesman in Swe­den. Indeed, Wahlström has authored sto­ries based on the Wik­iLeaks mate­r­ial for the news­pa­per Afton­bladet and is cred­ited as a pro­ducer on a recent Swedish pub­lic tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary about the group.

But while being the son of a famous Holo­caust denier is per­haps only suggestive—Wahlström is sure­ly not respon­si­ble for his father’s many sins—his cel­e­bra­tions of his father’s work in print and his con­tri­bu­tions to Shamir’s web­site sug­gest ide­o­log­i­cal affin­ity.* Indeed, in 2005 Wahlström wrote a sto­ry for the left­ist mag­a­zine Ord­front argu­ing that Swedish media, not known for being friend­ly to the Jew­ish state, was in fact being manip­u­lated by Jew­ish inter­ests on behalf of the Israeli gov­ern­ment.

Three of the jour­nal­ists inter­viewed for the story—Cecilia Uddén, Lot­ta Schüllerqvist, and Peter Löfgren—claimed that Wahlström fal­si­fied quotes, lead­ing the mag­a­zine to with­draw the sto­ry and issue an apol­ogy. Heléne Lööw, a his­to­rian of fas­cism and Euro­pean neo-Nazism, com­mented that the Wahlström sto­ry con­tained all the “ele­ments that one would find in a clas­sic anti-Semit­ic con­spir­acy the­o­ry.”

A mem­ber of Ordfront’s edi­to­r­ial board, writ­ing in the news­pa­per Dagens Nyheter, lament­ed that the piece was ever pub­lished, cit­ing Wahlström’s “close work­ing rela­tion­ship with Israel Shamir,” with­out point­ing out just how close the two were.

Wahlström and Shamir, father and son, are the Wik­iLeaks rep­re­sen­ta­tives for two rather large geo­graphic areas. Accord­ing to Swedish Radio’s inves­ti­ga­tion, Wahlström is the gate­keeper of the cables in Scan­di­navia, and “has the pow­er to decide” which news­pa­pers are pro­vided access and what leaks they are allowed to see. (At the time of fil­ing, Wahlström had yet to respond to an email request for com­ment.) . . .

“Ger­many aims to be a good part­ner”; bundesregierung.de; 4/17/2013.

EXCERPT: After their talks the Chan­cel­lor report­ed on the issues that are cur­rent­ly of par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal impor­tance: a free trade agree­ment, an invest­ment pro­tec­tion agree­ment and voca­tion­al train­ing.

Angela Merkel and Rafael Cor­rea dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca as a whole. Bilat­er­al rela­tions and also the rela­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca are “emi­nent­ly inter­est­ing”. “Ger­many would like to be an increas­ing­ly good part­ner,” said the Chan­cel­lor.

EU free trade agree­ment with Ecuador

Ecuador is inter­est­ed in join­ing the exist­ing free trade agree­ment between the Euro­pean Union and Colom­bia and Peru. Ger­many, said Angela Merkel, could help sup­port the pos­i­tive devel­op­ment of rela­tions between the EU and Ecuador. “I have said that we will once again be speak­ing with the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in order to gen­er­ate an impe­tus to bring these nego­ti­a­tions to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion,” she said.

A sta­ble legal frame­work for eco­nom­ic agree­ment

The talks also touched on the legal con­di­tions for improved eco­nom­ic coop­er­a­tion, and thus the con­clu­sion of a Ger­man-Ecuado­ri­an invest­ment pro­tec­tion agree­ment. “We need a sta­ble legal frame­work,” said the Chan­cel­lor. More talks are to be held between Ger­many and Ecuador on this point.
The Ger­man econ­o­my is also inter­est­ed in expand­ing infra­struc­ture, includ­ing air­ports and roads, said Angela Merkel. She made spe­cial men­tion of coop­er­a­tion in the field of voca­tion­al train­ing, and gave the exam­ple of the voca­tion­al school in Quito, which is attached to the city’s Ger­man school.

Suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion

One focus of bilat­er­al rela­tions is devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion. On the basis of inter­na­tion­al agree­ments, the two sides have been coop­er­at­ing close­ly for some 50 years. In the face of glob­al cli­mate change, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to con­serve trop­i­cal rain­forests. Ger­many is one of Ecuador’s largest bilat­er­al donors in the field of devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion.

In Octo­ber 2012 gov­ern­ment nego­ti­a­tions took place in Quito to decide on coop­er­a­tion over the next three years. For the pri­or­i­ty areas of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al resources and state decen­tral­i­sa­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion, a total of 60.9 mil­lion euros was pledged, i.e. 20.3 mil­lion euros a year. Total assis­tance already stands at some 600 mil­lion euros.

“Leak­er’s Flight Rais­es Ten­sion For 3 Nations” by Peter Bak­er and Ellen Bar­ry; The New York Times; 6/25/2013.

EXCERPT: Frus­trat­ed Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials pressed Rus­sia on Mon­day to turn over Edward J. Snow­den, the nation­al secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor who dis­closed sur­veil­lance pro­grams, while warn­ing Chi­na of “con­se­quences” for let­ting him flee to Moscow.

As Mr. Snow­den remained out of sight, appar­ent­ly holed up in Moscow await­ing word of his fate, what start­ed as a dra­mat­ic escape sto­ry involv­ing a self-described whis­tle-blow­er evolved into a diplo­mat­ic inci­dent in which the Unit­ed States faces an open rift with one major pow­er and a tense stand­off with anoth­er. Hopes for a quick res­o­lu­tion had fad­ed by night­fall.

Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry said China’s deci­sion to allow Mr. Snow­den to leave Hong Kong despite an arrest request from the Unit­ed States would have “with­out any ques­tion some effect, an impact on the rela­tion­ship, and con­se­quences.” He called on Rus­sia to expel Mr. Snow­den. “I would urge them to live by the stan­dards of the law, because that’s in the inter­est of every­body,” Mr. Ker­ry said.

He point­ed out that the Unit­ed States in the past two years had trans­ferred sev­en pris­on­ers Rus­sia had sought, though the par­al­lel is not exact, since Mr. Snow­den is not being held by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment.

At the White House, Pres­i­dent Obama’s press sec­re­tary, Jay Car­ney, rein­forced what he called “our frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment with Hong Kong and Chi­na,” call­ing their refusal to detain Mr. Snow­den a “seri­ous set­back” in rela­tions. He said the Hong Kong author­i­ties had been noti­fied that Mr. Snowden’s pass­port had been revoked, and he dis­missed their expla­na­tion that they had no legal basis to stop Mr. Snow­den. “We do not buy the sug­ges­tion that Chi­na could not have tak­en action,” Mr. Car­ney said.

Amer­i­can offi­cials also open­ly mocked Chi­na and Rus­sia as states that repress free speech and trans­paren­cy and there­fore are hard­ly apt refuges for some­one fight­ing gov­ern­ment secre­cy in the Unit­ed States.

“I won­der if Mr. Snow­den chose Chi­na and Rus­sia as assis­tants in his flight from jus­tice because they’re such pow­er­ful bas­tions of Inter­net free­dom,” Mr. Ker­ry said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly dur­ing a stop in New Del­hi. . . .

Discussion

3 comments for ““U‑2, Brut?” Part II: Eddie the Friendly Spook Hits the Trifecta (Updated)”

  1. He’s the Den­nis the Men­ace of espi­onage. “Hel­loooo, Mr. Putin!”:

    ABC News
    Edward Snow­den Steps Into Secret U.S.-Russia Spy Scuf­fle

    By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , LEE FERRAN (@leeferran) and RANDY KREIDER
    June 26, 2013

    As NSA leak­er Edward Snow­den is said to be spend­ing his third day in hid­ing in a Moscow air­port, the 30-year-old con­trac­tor may have unwit­ting­ly become the newest play­er in a relent­less yet rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle-known espi­onage war between the U.S. and Rus­sia.

    An ABC News review of pub­lic reports shows that in the past 16 months alone, at least six peo­ple have been accused or con­vict­ed of spy­ing for the U.S. in Rus­sia, includ­ing two Amer­i­cans who were kicked out of the coun­try and four Rus­sians pur­port­ed­ly recruit­ed by U.S. intel­li­gence — all sent to prison. Anoth­er Amer­i­can, a lawyer, was report­ed­ly expelled from Rus­sia this May because he rebuffed Russ­ian agents’ attempt to recruit him to spy for them.

    “Espi­onage is alive and well” between the old Cold War foes, said David Major, a for­mer senior FBI counter-intel­li­gence offi­cer and now Pres­i­dent of the Cen­tre for Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Stud­ies, which tracks spy cas­es the world over.

    Some of the cas­es, like that of blown CIA agent Ryan Fogle, splashed across head­lines the world over. But sev­er­al oth­ers, like the case of a Russ­ian intel­li­gence colonel who worked with the CIA and got 18 years behind bars for it, bare­ly made a rip­ple in Amer­i­can media.

    Pri­or to 2012, the whole world took notice in 2010 when the FBI round­ed up 10 under­cov­er Russ­ian agents in Amer­i­ca – includ­ing the “SoHo Spy” Anna Chap­man – but far few­er heard in 2011 when it was revealed a Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial in Moscow had giv­en the spy ring up and then fled to the U.S. That man, Col. Alexan­der Poteyev, report­ed­ly had been recruit­ed by the CIA.

    Now with Snow­den, a for­mer con­trac­tor for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency with a head and, report­ed­ly, lap­tops full of U.S. secrets, Major said the Rus­sians have been hand­ed a vic­to­ry, even if Snow­den insists he’s not work­ing with any gov­ern­ments.

    “One of the high­est tar­gets [for for­eign intel­li­gence agen­cies] has always been the NSA, one of the hard­est tar­gets for them ever to pen­e­trate,” Major said. “[Russ­ian intel­li­gence] is going to look at this case as an oppor­tu­ni­ty, as a trea­sure trove of intel­li­gence that [will be] exploit­ed to the extent that they can, and then when they decide, they’ll move on.”

    While hid­ing in Hong Kong ear­li­er this month, Snow­den revealed him­self to be the source of sev­er­al head­line-grab­bing reports from The Guardian and The Wash­ing­ton Post reveal­ing what he called “hor­ri­fy­ing” U.S. gov­ern­ment domes­tic and for­eign sur­veil­lance pro­grams. Snow­den, who has been charged by the U.S. with espi­onage, and those he worked with claim there’s much more to come to light.

    When he was in Hong Kong, Snow­den mocked the idea he would defect to Chi­na and said he only works “with jour­nal­ists.” After Snow­den escaped Hong Kong for Moscow – a move that stunned U.S. offi­cials — Rus­si­a’s Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin assured the world Tues­day that his secu­ri­ty ser­vices have not worked with Snow­den.

    Such assur­ances haven’t calmed fears from cur­rent and for­mer U.S. offi­cials who have told ABC News it would not be dif­fi­cult for for­eign intel­li­gence agents to copy infor­ma­tion from the lap­tops with which Snow­den is report­ed­ly trav­el­ing, with or with­out Snow­den’s per­mis­sion, or for them to talk direct­ly to Snow­den, if need be under the guise of immi­gra­tion offi­cers. Putin, a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cer him­self, said Snow­den is a free man and flat­ly denied repeat­ed U.S. requests to send him back to the States.

    “Why would you want to help?” Major said of Putin’s deci­sion no to expel Snow­den. “Why would­n’t you want to take advan­tage of that?”

    What­ev­er the Rus­sians can get from Snow­den, if any­thing, it will be the lat­est sal­vo in the decades-long bat­tle over secrets between the U.S. and Rus­sia that in recent years has reached a fevered pitch, harken­ing back to the days of the Sovi­et Union and the Berlin Wall.

    ...

    You kind of have to won­der about the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the claim that the NSA is “one of the hard­est tar­gets for them ever to pen­e­trate”. Maybe pre-911 that was the case, but if the Rus­sians can’t get a mole in the NSA nowa­days they might not be doing their due dili­gence:

    Flaws found in secu­ri­ty checks by U.S. con­trac­tors 4 years ago

    By Diane Bartz and Tabas­sum Zakaria

    WASHINGTON, June 26 | Wed Jun 26, 2013 12:59am EDT

    (Reuters) — U.S. gov­ern­ment audi­tors dis­cov­ered four years ago that a select group of pri­vate con­trac­tors con­duct­ing back­ground checks for high-secu­ri­ty jobs were not doing enough to ensure the qual­i­ty of their inves­ti­ga­tions.

    Some inves­ti­ga­tors hired by the com­pa­nies were not ade­quate­ly trained or close­ly super­vised, and the back­ground reports they turned over to agen­cies for hun­dreds of thou­sands of prospec­tive employ­ees had miss­ing infor­ma­tion that could lead to risky hir­ing, the inspec­tor gen­er­al for the Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment said in a 2010 report that got lit­tle atten­tion.

    Now, as Con­gress focus­es on how for­mer Booz Allen Hamil­ton sys­tems admin­is­tra­tor Edward Snow­den gained access to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency secrets while work­ing at a facil­i­ty in Hawaii, the report’s find­ings are draw­ing new atten­tion. Some law­mak­ers are call­ing for a full review of how secu­ri­ty clear­ances are done.

    Snow­den is fac­ing espi­onage charges after leak­ing details about secret U.S. sur­veil­lance pro­grams to the media. He flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on Sun­day and, accord­ing to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, on Tues­day he was in the tran­sit area of a Moscow air­port.

    At a hear­ing last week, Sen­a­tor Claire McCaskill, a Mis­souri Demo­c­rat on a con­tract­ing over­sight pan­el of the Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee, cit­ed an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into USIS, the con­trac­tor that con­duct­ed the most recent secu­ri­ty review of Snow­den.

    “It is a reminder that back­ground inves­ti­ga­tions can have real con­se­quences for our nation­al secu­ri­ty,” McCaskill said.

    Ques­tions have been raised about whether Snow­den mis­stat­ed his edu­ca­tion­al cre­den­tials. Hir­ing screen­ers at Booz Allen Hamil­ton found pos­si­ble dis­crep­an­cies in a resume sub­mit­ted by Snow­den, but the com­pa­ny still employed him, a source with detailed knowl­edge of the mat­ter said last week.

    Snow­den also would have had to under­go a poly­graph exam admin­is­tered by the NSA, a senior gov­ern­ment offi­cial said on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    USIS is one of three com­pa­nies now doing back­ground checks under con­tracts worth up to $2.5 bil­lion with the gov­ern­men­t’s Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment.

    USIS declined to com­ment for this sto­ry beyond a state­ment issued last week in which it said it had coop­er­at­ed with the OPM inspec­tor gen­er­al’s inves­ti­ga­tion and had no com­ment about Snow­den’s back­ground check.

    Screen­ing prospec­tive employ­ees is a chal­lenge because of the large num­ber of jobs now requir­ing secret or top-secret clear­ances.

    As of Octo­ber 2012, 4.9 mil­lion U.S. work­ers had some sort of fed­er­al secu­ri­ty clear­ance. There were 3.9 mil­lion back­ground inves­ti­ga­tions done in fis­cal 2012, some by the OPM’s Fed­er­al Inves­tiga­tive Ser­vices unit and oth­ers by the three con­trac­tors with over­sight by the OPM. It is unclear how many each does.

    The OPM’s Fed­er­al Inves­tiga­tive Ser­vices (FIS) defend­ed the qual­i­ty of back­ground inves­ti­ga­tions.

    “FIS inves­tiga­tive per­son­nel are held to the high­est stan­dards of eth­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al con­duct in their posi­tions of pub­lic trust and nation­al secu­ri­ty,” Mer­ton Miller, asso­ciate direc­tor of FIS, said in a state­ment. “Mis­con­duct rarely occurs.”

    The 2010 report found prob­lems with pro­ce­dures and safe­guards used by all three pri­vate con­trac­tors — USIS, Key­Point Gov­ern­ment Solu­tions and CACI Inter­na­tion­al Inc .

    All three com­pa­nies have had inves­ti­ga­tors who were found to have done sub­stan­dard work in back­ground checks, which involve pulling records and inter­view­ing asso­ciates of a job seek­er.

    “USIS, Kroll (Key­Point) and CACI have all employed back­ground inves­ti­ga­tors who have been con­vict­ed of fab­ri­ca­tion,” Susan Ruge, asso­ciate coun­sel at the OPM’s inspec­tor gen­er­al’s office said.

    The U.S. Attor­ney in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia has pros­e­cut­ed 18 cas­es since 2006 — 11 of them fed­er­al employ­ees and sev­en who worked for the pri­vate com­pa­nies, accord­ing to OPM Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Patrick McFar­land in tes­ti­mo­ny to Con­gress last week. The penal­ties for the crimes have ranged from prison time to house arrest.

    CACI and Key­Point declined to com­ment.

    Some experts said it made no dif­fer­ence whether the back­ground inves­ti­ga­tions were done by con­trac­tors or by gov­ern­ment employ­ees.

    Com­pa­nies are “using basi­cal­ly the same kinds of peo­ple” as the gov­ern­ment, said Daniel Schwartz, a for­mer NSA gen­er­al coun­sel. “They’re for­mer agents or retired agents.”

    The Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office said the fis­cal 2012 base price for a “top-secret” clear­ance inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by OPM was $4,005 while the base price of a less sen­si­tive “secret” clear­ance was $260.

    Those con­duct­ing the back­ground checks may be inex­pe­ri­enced, and may be pushed to work quick­ly, said Schwartz.

    “The real prob­lem in this process is that it is gross­ly under­staffed,” said Schwartz, now with the law firm Bryan Cave. “There are not enough good staffers. On the clear­ance side, it’s a huge prob­lem.”

    USIS, which has 2,300 inves­ti­ga­tors, is the old­est and largest of the three com­pa­nies. It was cre­at­ed in 1996 when the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to par­tial­ly pri­va­tize the work to achieve sav­ings esti­mat­ed at the time to be between $60 mil­lion and $120 mil­lion per year.

    USIS is owned by a larg­er inves­tiga­tive com­pa­ny called Altegri­ty, which in turn is prin­ci­pal­ly owned by pri­vate equi­ty firm Prov­i­dence Equi­ty Part­ners.

    Key­Point start­ed in 2000 as Kroll Gov­ern­ment Ser­vices, which did con­sult­ing and inves­ti­ga­tions. Ver­i­tas Cap­i­tal bought Kroll in 2009 and changed its name.

    It has 2000 inves­ti­ga­tors and works for more than 120 fed­er­al agen­cies, includ­ing OPM, Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion and the Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web site.

    Defense con­trac­tor CACI, a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, began doing fed­er­al back­ground checks in 2004. It was crit­i­cized for the trans­la­tors and oth­er per­son­nel that it pro­vid­ed to the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

    Since USIS was pri­va­tized to save an esti­mat­ed $60-$120 mil­lion per year, so it rais­es the ques­tion of what the actu­al sav­ings were. It would be pret­ty sweet if that info was avail­able:

    Here’s How Edward Snow­den Got ‘Top Secret’ Clear­ance

    By DAVID FRANCIS, The Fis­cal Times
    June 21, 2013

    A Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sub­com­mit­tee met Thurs­day after­noon to exam­ine the government’s process for grant­i­ng secu­ri­ty clear­ance.

    The pur­pose of the meet­ing was to fig­ure out how some­one like Edward Snow­den, the NSA leak­er, could get access to some of the most secret infor­ma­tion in the coun­try.

    The sub­com­mit­tee failed in that regard: Mer­ton Miller, asso­ciate direc­tor of inves­ti­ga­tions at the Office of Per­son­nel, said he had no infor­ma­tion on Snowden’s spe­cif­ic case. OPM Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Patrick McFar­land said he did have infor­ma­tion on Snow­den, but couldn’t reveal it to the com­mit­tee just yet.

    That’s not to say that the com­mit­tee lacked rev­e­la­tion. Six wit­ness­es and three law­mak­ers revealed a secu­ri­ty clear­ance sys­tem so bro­ken that it would be com­i­cal if a 29-year-old wasn’t hid­ing in Hong Kong and leak­ing Amer­i­can secrets to the press.

    That’s not to say that the com­mit­tee lacked rev­e­la­tion. Six wit­ness­es and three law­mak­ers revealed a secu­ri­ty clear­ance sys­tem so bro­ken that it would be com­i­cal if a 29-year-old wasn’t hid­ing in Hong Kong and to the press.

    They include:

    * 87 per­cent of back­ground checks are nev­er ful­ly com­plet­ed. OPM uses the infor­ma­tion it has to make a judg­ment on whether to approve these checks.
    * There are no uni­form guide­lines across the gov­ern­ment for dif­fer­ent lev­els of clear­ance. This means that top-secret clear­ance at one agency means some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent at anoth­er.
    * With­in each agency, there are no strict guide­lines for deter­min­ing secu­ri­ty clear­ance.
    * USIS, a pri­vate con­trac­tor, con­ducts 65 per­cent of all U.S. gov­ern­ment back­ground checks.
    * USIS, which con­duct­ed a back­ground check on Snow­den, is now under inves­ti­ga­tion by OPM’s IG for fail­ing to con­duct prop­er back­ground checks.
    * OPM has already paid USIS $200 mil­lion this year.
    * The $1‑bil­lion-dol­lar fund that OPM uses to pay for back­ground checks has nev­er been audit­ed.
    * OPM’s IG said they have not been grant­ed access to doc­u­men­ta­tion on the fund.
    * Miller said the doc­u­men­ta­tion did not exist.
    * Even if it did exist, OPM’s IG said he didn’t have the staff to audit the fund.
    * OPM’s IG was unable to answer the first two ques­tions he was asked with­out exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with mem­bers of the audi­ence.
    * One ques­tion was passed from one wit­ness, then to anoth­er, who called some­one named Stan­ley Sims out of the audi­ence to answer it.
    * I didn’t catch Sims’ title, but he did say there are more than 10,000 pri­vate facil­i­ties in the Unit­ed States that have secu­ri­ty clear­ance.
    * Eigh­teen OPM inves­ti­ga­tors have been con­vict­ed of fal­si­fy­ing infor­ma­tion con­tained in inves­ti­ga­tions they’ve con­duct­ed. Eleven work for OPM, while the oth­er sev­en work for pri­vate con­trac­tors.
    * Forty oth­er inves­ti­ga­tors are cur­rent­ly being inves­ti­gat­ed for fal­si­fy­ing back­ground checks.
    * When asked if there are more than 40, IG McFar­land said, “I believe there may be con­sid­er­ably more. I don’t believe we’ve caught it all by any stretch.”
    * Sen. Claire McCaskill (D‑MO) asked Miller why OPM so heav­i­ly relied on con­trac­tors.
    * He answered because they were cheap­er than hir­ing gov­ern­ment work­ers.
    * She asked him for a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis prov­ing this.
    * He said there is no cost ben­e­fit analy­sis.
    * McCaskill again asked how he knew they were cheap­er.
    * Because they are cheap­er, Miller said.
    * “I’m tired of this assump­tion that con­trac­tors are cheap­er. I just think it’s eas­i­er,” McCaskill then said.

    ...

    And one last fol­lowup: Intel­li­gence con­trac­tors aren’t actu­al­ly cheap­er:

    Bloomberg
    Booz Allen, the World’s Most Prof­itable Spy Orga­ni­za­tion
    By Drake Ben­nett and Michael Riley
    June 20, 2013

    ...

    Even so, spend­ing can spin way out of con­trol. Accord­ing to the ODNI, a typ­i­cal con­trac­tor employ­ee costs $207,000 a year, while a gov­ern­ment coun­ter­part costs $125,000, includ­ing ben­e­fits and pen­sion. One of the most noto­ri­ous projects was the NSA’s Trail­blaz­er. Intend­ed as an advanced pro­gram to sort and ana­lyze the vast vol­ume of phone and Web traf­fic that the NSA col­lects hourly, Trail­blaz­er was orig­i­nal­ly set to cost $280 mil­lion and take 26 months. Booz Allen was part of a five-com­pa­ny con­sor­tium work­ing on the project. (SAIC was the lead con­trac­tor.) “In Trail­blaz­er, NSA is cap­tur­ing the best of indus­try tech­nol­o­gy and expe­ri­ence to fur­ther their mis­sion,” Booz Allen Vice Pres­i­dent Mar­ty Hill said in a 2002 press release. In 2006, when the pro­gram shut down, it had failed to meet any of its goals, and its cost had run into the bil­lions of dol­lars. An NSA inspec­tor gen­er­al report found “exces­sive labor rates for con­trac­tor per­son­nel,” with­out nam­ing the con­trac­tors. Sev­er­al NSA employ­ees who denounced the waste were fired; one, a senior exec­u­tive named Thomas Andrews Drake, was charged under the Espi­onage Act after he spoke to a reporter. (The charges were even­tu­al­ly dropped.)

    A U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty com­put­er sys­tems con­tract award­ed to Booz Allen around the same time had sim­i­lar issues. Over the course of three years, costs explod­ed from the orig­i­nal $2 mil­lion to $124 mil­lion, in large part, audi­tors at the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office would lat­er report, because of poor plan­ning and over­sight. But even when the prob­lems came to light, as the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed, DHS con­tin­ued to renew the con­tract and even give Booz Allen new ones, because the agency deter­mined it couldn’t build, or even run, the sys­tem on its own.

    Booz Allen spokesman James Fish­er and NSA spokes­woman Vaneé Vines both declined to com­ment on Trail­blaz­er. (For­mer NSA Direc­tor Michael Hay­den has since said pub­licly that the project failed because the spy agency’s plan for it was unre­al­is­tic.) Fish­er also declined to com­ment on the DHS con­tract; Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for that agency, did not imme­di­ate­ly return a call for com­ment.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 26, 2013, 11:39 am

  2. Here’s one those sto­ries that’s a reminder that the mas­sive US mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex is run by a pret­ty small world:

    Busi­ness­Wire

    press release

    Aug. 1, 2013, 9:31 a.m. EDT
    CSSS.NET Hires Ray­mond C. Tye as Senior Vice Pres­i­dent

    WASHINGTON, Aug 01, 2013 (BUSINESS WIRE) — CSSS.NET, a lead­ing provider of mis­sion-crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions and one of the fastest-grow­ing, women-owned, ser­vice-dis­abled vet­er­an-owned gov­ern­ment solu­tions providers in the coun­try, announced today it has hired Ray­mond C. Tye as senior vice pres­i­dent. Report­ing to com­pa­ny pres­i­dent and CEO Lisa Wol­ford, Tye is respon­si­ble for day-to-day pro­gram oper­a­tions for cus­tomers in the east­ern U.S., over­all gov­ern­ment mar­ket expan­sion in Wash­ing­ton, and the sup­port of over­all busi­ness strat­e­gy devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion.

    “We are very excit­ed about hav­ing Ray on our team. He brings more than 25 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in fast-paced, high-growth gov­ern­ment sec­tors and will be a great asset to our orga­ni­za­tion,” said Wol­ford. “Ray shares our intense com­mit­ment to cus­tomer suc­cess as well as our char­ac­ter — trust, reli­a­bil­i­ty and respect. His indus­try knowl­edge and exper­tise will great­ly con­tribute to our mis­sion of deliv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty solu­tions to our diverse clients.”

    Tye’s career includes a wide range of senior lead­er­ship posi­tions in orga­ni­za­tions rang­ing from For­tune 100 firms to gov­ern­ment agen­cies to start­up com­pa­nies. Most recent­ly, he served as vice pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions busi­ness unit at USIS, where he was respon­si­ble for deliv­er­ing a wide range of secu­ri­ty, tech­ni­cal and ana­lyt­i­cal solu­tions and busi­ness oper­a­tions sup­port to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, Home­land Secu­ri­ty and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies.

    Pri­or to join­ing USIS, Tye served as prin­ci­pal at Booz Allen Hamil­ton, where he pro­vid­ed secu­ri­ty solu­tions sup­port for a num­ber of fed­er­al agen­cies. He was respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing strate­gic plans, iden­ti­fy­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal func­tions, and pro­vid­ing pro­gram sup­port for gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial accounts, with a focus on the devel­op­ment, con­ver­gence, and inte­gra­tion of IT secu­ri­ty, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy solu­tions.

    A vet­er­an of the U.S. Marine Corps, Tye enlist­ed in 1973, was com­mis­sioned as an offi­cer in 1981 and retired from mil­i­tary ser­vice in 2000.

    Tye holds a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty and a Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Busi­ness Hon­ors Pro­gram. He is a cer­ti­fied infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty man­ag­er, a des­ig­na­tion grant­ed by the Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Audit and Con­trol Asso­ci­a­tion.

    ...

    And here’s a reminder that MIC-mis­man­age­ment is appar­ent­ly one of that small world’s god giv­en rights:

    USIS gets secu­ri­ty con­tract exten­sion
    Pub­lished: Aug. 5, 2013 at 11:26 AM
    ARLINGTON, Va., Aug. 5 (UPI) — Per­son­nel secu­ri­ty ser­vices will con­tin­ue to be pro­vid­ed to the U.S. gov­ern­ment by a firm report­ed­ly caught up in the Edward Snow­den espi­onage affair.

    US Inves­ti­ga­tions Ser­vices LLC said the con­tin­ued work is for the Fed­er­al Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice, a Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty sub-com­po­nent of the Nation­al Pro­tec­tion and Pro­grams Direc­torate, and comes through the exer­cise of a con­tract option.

    “USIS is hon­ored to con­tin­ue to pro­vide a team of high­ly trained pro­fes­sion­als that can assist FPS in its mis­sion to ren­der fed­er­al prop­er­ties safe and secure for fed­er­al employ­ees, offi­cials and vis­i­tors,” said Ster­ling Phillips, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of USIS.

    The ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed include sup­ply­ing pro­gram man­agers, per­son­nel secu­ri­ty assis­tants and per­son­nel secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists for “cre­den­tial­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice helpdesk, indus­tri­al secu­ri­ty and broad pro­gram support/consultation,” USIS said.

    The option is part of a con­tract award­ed to USIS in 2011.

    USIS is report­ed to have con­duct­ed a secu­ri­ty clear­ance review of Snow­den, the con­trac­tor per­form­ing work for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency who leaked infor­ma­tion on NSA domes­tic sur­veil­lance pro­grams and then fled the coun­try. The Wall Street Jour­nal, cit­ing uniden­ti­fied sources, report­ed that a fed­er­al grand jury is inves­ti­gat­ing whether USIS improp­er­ly rushed cas­es with­out prop­er review.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 24, 2013, 6:32 pm

  3. Nation­al secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor clear­ances: Nice work if you can get it:

    August 28, 2013, 11:45 p.m. ET

    Com­pa­ny That Vet­ted Snow­den Defends Work
    US Inves­ti­ga­tions Ser­vices Says It Was Up to the Gov­ern­ment to Find Fault With Its 2011 Review of For­mer NSA Con­trac­tor

    By DION NISSENBAUM

    WASHINGTON—The pri­vate com­pa­ny that con­duct­ed the last back­ground check of for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den said it was the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to catch any prob­lems with its 2011 inves­ti­ga­tion of the man who has said he leaked top-secret doc­u­ments.

    US Inves­ti­ga­tions Ser­vices LLC defend­ed its work after a review by the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that the Falls Church, Va.-based com­pa­ny con­duct­ed an inad­e­quate exam­i­na­tion of Mr. Snow­den for the renew­al of his high-secu­ri­ty clear­ance.

    Mr. Snow­den still had that clear­ance when he was hired ear­ly this year by Booz Allen Hamil­ton Inc., where he used his posi­tion as a sys­tems admin­is­tra­tor at an NSA office in Hawaii to obtain top-secret doc­u­ments detail­ing Amer­i­ca’s glob­al sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

    USIS declined to dis­cuss the fed­er­al review on Tues­day. But it said Wednes­day that a Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle paint­ed “an inac­cu­rate view” of its role in the case. While USIS said it could­n’t “refute or ver­i­fy” the gov­ern­men­t’s con­clu­sions, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment did­n’t raise any con­cerns at the time about its work in Feb­ru­ary 2011 on the five-year “peri­od­ic rein­ves­ti­ga­tion” of Mr. Snow­den. The com­pa­ny said the NSA, not USIS, was ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for approv­ing or deny­ing Mr. Snow­den’s secu­ri­ty clear­ance.

    USIS is the largest of three firms con­duct­ing back­ground inves­ti­ga­tions under a mul­ti­year fed­er­al con­tract award­ed in 2011 that is worth near­ly $2.5 bil­lion. USIS received $200 mil­lion last year for such work.

    In Mr. Snow­den’s case, USIS said, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment accept­ed its find­ings with­out ask­ing for a deep­er inves­ti­ga­tion. After Mr. Snow­den came for­ward in June as the source of sto­ries on top-secret U.S. sur­veil­lance pro­grams, USIS said that it had been told by the fed­er­al Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment, the agency respon­si­ble for over­see­ing most fed­er­al back­ground checks, that “all stan­dards were met” in its 2011 inves­ti­ga­tion.

    But the review of Mr. Snow­den’s case by the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that USIS fell short. A report said USIS failed to track down enough char­ac­ter ref­er­ences for Mr. Snow­den and that inves­ti­ga­tors did­n’t do enough to exam­ine con­cerns raised dur­ing the review.

    As a result, the exam­i­na­tion con­clud­ed, the 2011 inves­ti­ga­tion “did not present a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of Mr. Snow­den.”

    The NSA, the Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment and that agen­cy’s inspec­tor gen­er­al, which has been inves­ti­gat­ing USIS, all declined to com­ment.

    ...

    Actu­al­ly, the work itself looks awful, but the div­i­dends are prob­a­bly pret­ty sweet.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 29, 2013, 9:06 am

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