Office of personnel goofs.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Standards of granting security clearance to federal contractors - Brief article

Whether you regard Edward Snowden as a sinner or a saint, you have to concede that something went awry when he was given top-secret clearance. USIS, the private contractor that performed the most recent background check responsible for Snowden's top-secret clearance, is itself being investigated by the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general for the "systemic failure to adequately conduct investigations under its contract"--an investigation that was already under way when USIS was assigned the Snowden case.

This was among several disconcerting facts that emerged from the June 20 hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight chaired by Claire McCaskill. It seems that there is no standard for determining what security clearances are needed for specific federal contractor jobs and that 87 percent of the investigation files are incomplete, meaning, for example, that the background investigator decided to skip an interview with a past employer in favor of a more leisurely lunch without bothering to explain the...