Integrity?! We don't need no stinkin Integrity!

The Senior Advisory Panel (SAP) of the US Department of State is a board composed of the Undersecretary of State For Management (M), the Assistant Secretary for Administration (A) and the Director General of the Foreign Service (DG), which, among other things, is the final board of appeal in security clearance revocation cases. It is intended to provide an accused employee with a fair and impartial court of final appeal, and also to serve a management control function by confirming that proper procedures were followed in the investigation, review and adjudication of the matter before its members.

On December 13, 2007 the SAP will meet for the first time under the direction of the new M, Pat Kennedy.

For most of the decades it has functioned, the SAP has been a fair and impartial body, which honestly appraised the cases before it with an impartial eye, and did not hesitate to overturn recommendations that were unsupported by evidence. During the recent administration of former M Henrietta Fore, however, the SAP became a kangaroo court, routinely breaking its own rules and departing from earlier precedents to rubber-stamp every recommendation that came before it. In many ways, the December 13th SAP meeting will serve to indicate whether Pat Kennedy intends to return the SAP to a position of impartiality, or whether he intends to continue the Fore tradition of hiding mismanagement within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) beneath a cover of feigned integrity.

At issue will be the ability of the SAP to serve as an impartial body providing a legitimate court of appeal, and its intention, or lack thereof, to perform its intended management control and oversight functions. This, in turn, will be demonstrated by its behavior with regard to two crucial questions:

1) Whether the SAP will accept DS allegations at face value as Fore routinely did, or will return to earlier precedent of insistence on the provision of evidence to support those allegations,

and

2) Whether the SAP will accept without question, as Fore did, that every DS case was developed correctly, or whether it will return to its earlier willingness to require evidence, as it correctly should, that investigations, adjudications and recommendations regarding security clearance cases were conducted and developed in accordance with all applicable rules and regulations.

Under Henrietta Fore, as stated, the SAP routinely ignored its management control responsibilities and defended its avoidance of those responsibilities by citing two basic principles: "the presumption of integrity" and "the division of responsibilities." It is incumbent upon the SAP to begin every review with the presumption of integrity (the presumption that DS is acting honestly) and it is reasonable, on the surface, to assume that the division of responsibilities within the Department imply that DS is expert in interpreting and applying the regulations pertaining to security clearance revocations. The presumption of integrity and the presumption of expertise based on the division of responsibilities should not prevent the SAP from questioning evident inconsistencies or improprieties in cases under its jurisdiction. The events of recent years have clearly shown that neither presumption is justified.

In the first place, DS is not the expert it once was on security clearance issues. Following a rapid expansion of DS during the past five years, nearly 5 out of every 6 DS agents have less than three years of service to the State Department and most were recruited from outside the government. Only a very tiny fraction of DS agents have any training whatsoever in the conduct of the type of impartial Personnel Security Background Investigation required for a security clearance adjudication. Most were trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center only to perform investigations that would support a criminal indictment.

Nor does DS leadership possess that training. Donald Reid, the Director of Security Infrastructure, is an expert in computer security, with experience in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and a smattering of OIG experience. As expressed in other postings on this blog, law enforcement investigative procedures are incompatible with security clearance adjudication, which is why most most agencies treat security clearances as a personnel function, and use specialized personnel security investigators, not law enforcement personnel, to conduct background investigations. At no time during the 30 plus years prior to assuming his current position did Don Reid have any hands-on experience overseeing security clearance adjudication. Talking or writing about security clearance procedures, he displays only the vaguest understanding of the concepts involved and expresses an old Air Force OSI man's contempt for the "whole person" concept (the requirement to consider positive as well as negative information ) which forms the backbone of those procedures.

Addressing the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy a month ago, acting Director of the Diplomatic Security Service Pat Donovan described employees with suspended clearances, in essence, as "a bunch of wife beaters and thieves." That allegation is not only demonstrably untrue, but it demonstrates that Donovan, the second highest officer in DS, has no understanding of the difference between a security clearance matter (which should assess the ability of an employee to protect government secrets) and a disciplinary matter (which focuses on identifying and punishing any acts of mis- or malfeasance). This ignorance should not surprise anyone. Donovan is an expert on physical security, not personnel security and, like Reid, has no prior experience overseeing clearance adjudication.

In summary, the reality of DS's supposed expertise is that investigations are being performed by agents untrained to perform them; adjudicators routinely make flawed decisions based on flawed and biased reports; and the results are rubber-stamped by supervisors who are, at best, largely ignorant of the regulations.

Regarding the presumption of DS integrity, we could start by noting the recent resignation of the former head of DS, Assistant Secretary Richard Griffin, who resigned after Congress began investigating a wide range of improprieties that Griffin's office had sought to hide. That investigation flowed from a related investigation of the State Department's Inspector General, Howard Krongard, which indicated considerable collusion between Krongard and Griffin to fraudulently conceal improprieties in DS operations. We could continue by mentioning that several alleged actions by Krongard, including his office's whitewash of the security clearance function in DS, are currently under investigation by the Justice Department, which is investigating them as possible criminal matters. We could continue further by citing numerous allegations of investigative improprieties by DS agents with respect to security clearance cases, some made by experts outside the agency, which were never investigated by either DS or the State Department OIG, and note that no special agent thus accused, even those accused of criminal malfeasance in this regard, has been disciplined, much less fired. We could, but we won't.

Instead, we will note only that during the past few years, the SAP itself, under Henrietta Fore, held hearings which included improper ex-parte meetings with DS representatives before and after those hearings, hearings which tolerated and participated in HIPAA Act and Privacy Act violations, hearings in which the State Department claimed it was exempt from the evidence requirements of other government agencies, and at least one hearing in which the accused FSO was not allowed to see (and therefor not allowed the required opportunity to rebut) any of the alleged evidence against him. In short, the SAP provided cover for errors committed by DS rather than providing the oversight and independent appellate review it was intended to provide.

This is the historical legacy that Kennedy must confront in his first SAP hearing. His actions on December 13th will tell a lot about the path he intends to follow during his tenure as Undersecretary. A number of interested parties will be watching closely.