Fixing the Security Clearance Mess
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Regarding Stephen Barr's May 18 Federal Diary column, "No Secret What's Wrong With Clearances":
The process of providing security clearances is broken at one major point: among defense contractors.
All too often, cleared defense contractors pad their access rosters with employees who do not require security clearances to perform their official duties, and this in turn drives up the number of clearances that clog an already inefficient clearance-access process. Contractors benefit by having a large pool of workers to draw on, but many workers go through the arduous process of getting top-secret clearances and never work a single minute on a top-secret project or
see any information above the secret level.
A major overhaul is long overdue at the Defense Security Service to address this problem, which has gotten worse since Sept. 11, 2001. The solution is not new policies to expedite a critical aspect to our national security; it is to enforce policies meant to ensure that defense contractors requiring personnel security clearances tie them to an active, valid, classified contract, in accordance with the law.
JOHN LIAKAKOS
Potomac Falls
