Any Idiot Can Deny a Visa

Like most of my colleagues, I began my Foreign Service career with a consular tour. In order to prepare me, I was trained at the Foreign Service Institute, in the consular course. It was two decades ago, but I still remember the teacher's admonition at the end of the course. "Any idiot can deny a visa," he said. "You were not hired for that. Your job is to issue visas to each and every person who is legitimately qualified to receive one. That requires judgement, skill and the ability to interpret evidence in the context of laws. That is why the Government hired you."

This morning I received an email from a colleague, a member of Concerned Foreign Service Officers whose security clearance was revoked in 2004 by Diplomatic Security. His clearance was revoked based on a demonstrably improper investigation which alleged that his ties to a foreign country were stronger than his ties to America. Several of the people interviewed in that investigation complained about the biased and aggressive way in which the investigation was conducted. DS ignored their complaints, ignored a great deal of evidence showing that DS's position was factually incorrect, and railroaded this employee out of the State Department.

The email I received this morning was written from an American military base, where this colleague, who is fully cleared by the Army and has been promoted since he left the State Department, is patriotically serving the American people in a war zone. He is in fact, one of several former State Department employees, stripped of their clearances by overzealous and out-of-control DS investigators, who are serving this country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All of them hold Secret clearances or above, issued by the Department of Defense. At least two currently work in military intelligence positions, for which they are cleared above Top Secret by the Defense Security Service, for access to compartmentalized information.

According to DOD, which conducts the vast majority of security clearance adjudications, these employees meet the requirements for such clearances.

The DOD is not ignorant of the circumstances which led to these employees leaving the State Department. DS did everything it could to make sure that all the so-called "derogatory information" allegedly revealed by DS's investigations made its way to the DOD's Defense Security Service, which adjudicates security clearances.

They were cleared for their military security clearances by adjudicators who were fully cognizant of the "evidence" supporting DS's revocations. They were cleared for duties which could direct affect the safety of American troops in a war zone and the effectiveness of military operations.

They were cleared because DOD conducts clearance adjudications the way the law requires them to be done. As "whole-person" evaluations based on unbiased investigations conducted for the purpose of a clearance adjudication. When the whole person was considered, and DS's alleged "derogatory information" placed in context, these employees were found to meet the criteria for access to military secrets far more sensitive than those to which they were denied access by DS.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security may argue that DS is being stricter than the military. They may trot out their old saw that "nobody has a right to a clearance." They may argue that one simply can't be too careful. They may point out that "all doubts must be resolved in favor of the national security," while ignoring, as they do, the legal definition of "doubt" used by those who perform nearly all of the U.S. Government's clearance adjudications.

DS does not seem to understand that suspending or revoking a clearance can mean that a recognized subject-matter expert is unable to provide the State Department with expertise that it requires for its mission; or a key person might be removed from a project at a critical point in its advancement; or a position, critical to national security, might remain unfilled while DS conscientiously endeavors to discover whether the person who was supposed to fill it slept with his girlfriend before or after he reported the relationship.

The sad truth of the matter is that the Defense Security Service understands the purpose of the work they perform and Diplomatic Security does not.

The purpose is not to look for ways to deny a clearance, and failing that, to suspend a clearance and hold people in limbo for years until some excuse can be found to justify a denial. The purpose is not to work and rework cases, wording them this way and that until a formulation is found which could withstand legal scrutiny.

The purpose, the ONLY purpose, of a security clearance review and adjudication is to honestly, completely and objectively assess a whole person, the bad and the good, with the objective of allowing him or her the access he or she needs to perform the work they were hired for, if at all possible.

That does not mean that everybody should get a clearance, nor that those who legitimately are inelgible should not be denied access to classified information.

It simply means following the rules, following the laws, and understanding why these laws exist.

When I was a consular officer, I refused nearly fifty percent of the applicants I interviewed. I identified fraudulent documents, entered documented bad cases into the lookout, and even arranged for a couple of people who presented fake passports to be arrested when they left the Embassy.

I kept the bad guys out.

But I never forgot that my job, my real job, was to let the good guys in.