Catching Spies

John Hamre is a former deputy secretary of defense and chairman of the Defense Policy Board.  He has had security clearance for 27 years, but his clearance must be renewed every five years.  He recounts his experience in doing so and along the way points out the stupidity and waste of time and money of the process.

Some examples:

• The last time he renewed his clearance he did so electronically.  Now, the computer system asks him to start from scratch. Why can't he start from his last submission's data?
• The form asks him to list all foreign travel he's taken in the last seven years.  He travels extensively and completes a security report each time.  Why doesn't the system know this?
• Because he refused to repeat a litany of his travels, he was visited by a representative of the Office of Personnel Management, which is the agency which stores these records.  The investigator went by the book asking him his name, address, etc., basically everything that he had entered on the magic form.

His summary of his experience:

In other words, to grant a top-secret clearance in the United States, we ask a potential spy to fill out a form, which is given to an employee, possibly a contract worker, who then asks the candidate to verbally confirm what he has written. 

When reviewing applications to determine whether they are fraudulent, very, very few companies are as inefficient as the federal government.  Hamre estimates this is costing us $1 billion annually.  Using modern technology would whittle this cost down substantially.