A key Democratic senator said Monday she would scrutinize the Obama administration’s creation of a new agency to handle security clearance background checks, after a major breach of millions of Americans’ personal data last year and a number of recent security lapses related to the program.
“At first glance, these changes sound promising,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement. “But the stakes of getting this right couldn’t be higher, so this transition will have to be airtight if Americans are to be confident in the security of the nation’s secrets and federal facilities.”
McCaskill was reacting to the news Friday that the Obama administration intends to create the National Background Investigations Bureau, or NBIB. The new agency will replace the Office of Personnel Management’s existing Federal Investigative Services.
The NBIB will still fall under OPM’s management, but the Pentagon will control the design, development, security and operation of its background investigations information technology system, the White House said in a release.
The White House provided no timetable for instituting the changes and establishing the agency, but said it would begin this year. President Obama also plans to seek $95 million more in its upcoming fiscal 2017 budget to aid the process.
On Friday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform panel, said the White House move seemed like window-dressing, and also vowed to keep close tabs on the overhaul.
“Protecting this information should be a core competency of OPM,” Chaffetz said in a statement Friday. “Today’s announcement seems aimed only at solving a perception problem rather than tackling the reforms needed to fix a broken security clearance process.”
McCaskill also has a stake in the issue, as she sponsored a bipartisan measure aimed at overhauling the nation’s security clearance investigations for federal employees and contractors. McCaskill’s bill would require the federal government to implement an automated, random review that would search public records and databases for information on every individual with a security clearance at least twice every five years.
The bill cleared a key Senate hurdle when the Senate Intelligence Committee passed it last fall as part of the Intelligence Authorization Act.
She also sponsored another piece of bipartisan legislation that directs OPM to terminate or place on leave any employee that is involved in intentional misconduct affecting the integrity of background investigations, including falsifying information, fraud or other serious misconduct.
The Senate passed that bill last year. It directly addresses problems with the background check system that came to light after reports that the system didn’t uncover Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis’ checkered background and previous arrests, or evidence that he lied on the forms his security clearance required. Alexis killed 13 people in a 2013 shooting rampage in Washington’s Navy Yard.
The same company that performed Alexis’ background investigation also conducted government leaker Edward Snowden’s.
The personnel vetting company, United States Investigations Services, was the largest private background check firm used by the government. It agreed to a $30 million settlement with the federal government after the Justice Department charged officials there with carrying out a plot to “flush or dump” individual cases that they deemed to be low-level in order to meet internal goals.
In addition, the OPM last year was forced to disclose that a hack of its computers exposed the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of roughly 22 million current and former federal employees and contractors.
