Prevention is the best medicine.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills

Attention is ordinarily paid to prevention only after a disaster has occurred. For example, after the Navy Yard killings, Washington Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Zachary A. Goldfarb, along with Jia Lynn Yang, did a brilliant job of interviewing the employees of USIS, the private contractor that failed to identify the danger posed by shooter Aaron Alexis. As we mentioned in our last issue, USIS similarly failed in the case of Edward Snowden. "There was this intense pressure to do more and faster," said one USIS employees to the Post. "When you're giving me a week to interview 50 people, that's impossible," said another. Still another adds, "It's very: 'Here's a sheet of questions, ask the questions, hurry and get the answers, submit them and move forward. There's just not a lot of paying attention to potential red flags and that sort of thing." Mark Riley, a former Army officer who worked as a private security clearance lawyer, told the Post, "They don't ask the right follow-up questions. ... The bottom line is the buck, rather than national security."

Consider how the Navy Yard killings might have been avoided if this reporting had been done a year or two earlier and the public spotlight had been cast on the problem so there would have been a chance...