Holy Freaking Crap! How Did NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Get Security Clearance?

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The phrase “whistleblower” would imply the disclosure of wrongdoing and — sorry, Senator Paul — I don’t see any crime at NSA, beyond the negligence that put a high-school dropout in a position to decide what secrets the U.S. government is permitted to keep:

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement saying that authorities are “reviewing the damage” to U.S. security by Snowden’s illegal disclosures: “Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law.”
Several former intelligence officials said details about Snowden’s career raised questions about how he obtained security clearance.
Snowden told the Guardian he is a North Carolina native who did not graduate from high school, but earned a General Equivalency Diploma (GED) after his family moved to Maryland.  Snowden said he studied computers at a community college and enlisted in the Army in 2003 under the 18X program for recruits seeking to join the elite Special Forces, but was discharged after breaking both his legs in a training accident. He said his Army experience disillusioned him about the Iraq war because “most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.” After leaving the Army, he was hired as a security guard at an NSA facility in Maryland, Snowden said, then worked as an information technology specialist for the CIA, which in 2007 stationed him in Switzerland under diplomatic cover. ”Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,”Snowden told the Guardian. “I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”
One former U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Post that Snowden’s clearance may have been fast-tracked because of the government’s effort to ramp up its computer counter-terrorism programs after the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001:  “Like a lot of things after 9/11, they just went on a hiring binge, and in the technical arena young, smart nerds were in high demand.” Another official, formerly with the CIA, told the Post it was extremely unusual for the agency to employ people with Snowden’s background: “I just have never heard of anyone being hired with so little academic credentials.”

Read the rest at ViralRead. Perhaps my colleague, the erstwhile Admiral of the Afghan Seas, will have something to say this evening, when he gets home from The Job He Can’t Talk About.

 


86 comments

  1. Remember when the Obama admin said something about gov’t employees making more than mundanes because they’re smarter than we are?

    Still not buying that one!

  3. What should the requirements for a TS clearance be?

    At 19, mine was based on a clear background check that was initiated as soon as I enlisted for an MOS that required one. The fact that I had barely graduated H.S. was apparently never an issue. Like Snowden, my MOS was changed (twice, actually, by the ASA) during BCT / NSA training – not due to an injury but due to the ASA’s evolving needs.

    So… unless things have changed drastically since my service, I’m not sure I understand what the big freaking deal is here, Robert.

  4. There is something funny here. Isn’t a requirement for the program that the applicant be a high school graduate? He wasn’t. And there are legitimate disagreements on the legality and constitutionality of what the NSA has been doing; neither the NSA charter nor FISA allow for wholesale domestic spying, which is what it looks like occurred here. Too soon to tell.

  5. In 2003 Military recruiters were having a difficult time, because the U.S. was involved in 2 wars Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s the only way he managed to enlist with a GED. Recruiters were having a difficult time making their quotas. The economy was fairly good in 2003, and people were not hard up for employment.

    I think that’s what Manning and Snowden, have in-common recruiters were scrapping the bottom of the barrel to meet their quotas.

  6. As a libertarian-leaning conservative I believe we the people have an absolute right to know our government is recording, warehousing, and data-mining all our telephone conversations. WTF?

    What to do with this guy? You make the call, because I don’t care. I’m still stuck on the above.

  7. First off he went to a far left paper the Guardian. His Q and A with the Guardian:

    Q: Do you see yourself as another Bradley Manning?

    A: “Manning was a classic whistleblower. He was inspired by the public good.”

    His motivation appears to be he want’s to be the NEW darling of the far left. He’s witnessed the attention Bradley Manning got, and decided to copy Manning’s behavior. It’s a clear case of Monkey see Monkey do.

    Neither Manning or Snowden were intellectually mature or equipped for the secret clearance they were given by our government. These kids come from the reality teevee generation, you can become famous for no special reason.

    ***What’s interesting about this entire situation is that the Obama administration is being attacked by his Left flank.

  8. Has the FBI gotten a warrant to access all of Glenn Greenwald’s communications yet? I mean, hell, if they could snoop around James Rosen, they certainly need to be going after Greenwald.

  9. Actually, if the program is unconstitutional, it does mean that the program is illegal. A law that violates the constitution is without foundation, and void ab initio.

    And, at first glance, the gathering of highly detailed information about the contacts, activities and movement of hundreds of millions of citizens who are not suspected of any crime appears to be a violation of the fourth amendment to the constitution.

    The only line the snoops seem to have stopped at is actually listening to voice conversations. Everything else you have ever done with a phone or online has been recorded and retained.

    So you somehow suppose that OFA and Obama’s new best buddy, Google founder Eric Schmidt and his new pro-Democrat organization don’t already have a detailed political and legal profile on you based on this information?

    Do you suppose there isn’t something in that record that could be used to discredit you or destroy your life?

    Do you suppose that if you become an effective threat against Democrat hegemony that you won’t be targeted using this information?

    Do you still think this is about terrorists?

    How naive are you?

  10. I agree in concept, but practically it is not illegal (at least not yet). If the Supreme Court says, this violates the 4th Amendment, no one gets charged (let alone convicted) for previously violating the 4th Amendment. Once the Supreme Court rules, then the players have to stop doing what they are doing (and they face potential contempt and other sanctions if they refuse to do so).

  11. If you have no criminal background, were born in the U.S., and are not triggering off any other red flags, it is not surprising that Snowden got a security clearance. I doubt they even require a lie detector interview for the initial level security clearance (like you get when you join the FBI). I do not know if Snowden got a lie detector interview for the CIA, but (assuming he did get one) at the time he took it he presumably answered truthfully and passed.

  17. So only the SC may judge the constitutionality of a law? We are not allowed an opinion until it has been validated by authority.

    May a soldier not disobey an illegal order until the matter has been adjudicated by a military tribunal?

    Yes, they have cover, but that is a matter of liability, not legality. And many experts have stated that nowhere is this sort of data gathering program, or subpoena upon the records of virtually every resident of the US authorized under the PATRIOT act

  18. Visit Sunny Sao Paulo, the boy-sex capital of South America! Just keep your back to a wall.

  20. Heck, I got a clearance even though it turned out a young lady I was acquainted with turned out to be a former mistress of the head of the UK Worker’s Revolutionary Party. I caught more shit over that from my drill sergeants (long conversation in the tear gas chamber) than I did from the recruiters.

  21. Here’s the fun part, Stacy: they’ve already got them! Greenwald lives offshore! And if you ever do something like, oh, say, phone-interview Pamela Geller or Walid Shoebat or some goon from Stormfront, now they’ll have permanent records that you’ve been in contact with racists and Islamophobic extremists. Not to worry though, I’m sure they’d never try to play that card against you.

  22. Ok, so when President Roosevelt issued the executive order interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps, that was Constitutional? Until it wasn’t? You can argue the “practicality” of it, but I can cite cases all day long of the history of SCOTUS and their support of tyranny.

    And I have some bad news for you. It IS illegal. Totally illegal. The NSA cannot COLLECT against US Citizens. You should probably look this up and check your history books for why this is forbidden and how it came about.

  23. The article says that “he later obtained his GED.” When is “later,” because he enlisted in 2003, when he was 18 or 19. I do not like vague details, especially in a story like this.

  24. It’s not an issue. Not if he had his GED. But there are some weird things about his story. Like his foreign experience. He almost makes it out to be a position similar to a FAO. And you know as well as I, that you have to have a massive rap sheet for something like that. Your resume has to be packed to get a foreign assignment like the one he was describing. Either he was embellishing a little or I’m misunderstanding his role in that position.

  27. OMG. I loved the gas chamber. I had such a problem with allergies during boot. The gas cleared it right up. In fact, I was the last one out. The last few weeks, I was begging to go back.

  29. Just re-read the transcript and I guess you’ll have to refresh my memory re: what embellishment you’re referring to (I may easily have missed it).

    My very first assignment was overseas.

    And it wasn’t Phu Bai or anywhere near.

    And I was far from alone in that regard.

    I don’t think that has changed much.

  30. Not sure that’s necessarily true.

    PRISM would fall under NSA’s monitoring functions. The far more sensitive stuff is our own crypto and comms systems/programs. Folks with access to the latter tend to also have de facto access to the former, but definitely not vice versa. Snowden would have fallen into the “less access” category, at least as he describes his job history and given the program he exposed.

  31. Where were all the concerned citizens at the White House when the black sites were leaked to the NYT?

  32. “In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged. By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland.”

    In 4 years, this guy goes from Army grunt to covert CIA security analyst, with nothing but a GED? Either he’s Aaron Schwartz, or I’m missing something.

  33. Think back to the intelligence community and national security staff during the Carter Administration. We had plenty of people who obtained government positions and security clearances who were more liberal than loyal. Even when President Reagan tried to tighten that up, he didn’t fully succeed, because the same Ivy League to CIA pipeline continued to exist, and still exists.

    Of course, Mr Snowden isn’t Ivy League, but there remains a mindset amongst the middle-and-top career-level employees which allows for laxness.

  34. If a soldier disobeys an order because he believes it to have been illegal, he had better be right!

  35. Out of curiosity…how many people at NSA or CIA that have access to classified material don’t have to poly?

  36. Actually, it was Constitutional, according to the Supreme Court, in Korematsu v United States. (1944).

    As for whether the intelligence gathering was either illegal or unconstitutional, the Fourth Amendment contains the fudge word “reasonable.” Unlike the First and Second Amendments, the Fourth is not written in absolute terms, and the legality/ constitutionality will depend upon the Supreme Court’s definition of whether the intelligence gathering was reasonable. And I would never say that the Court will decide this way or that; the Supremes have surprised us too many times.

  39. If you kept reading, I made the point about SCOTUS supporting tyranny. They did this during WWI as well. And while SCOTUS may have upheld the Constitutionality in Korematsu, they specifically stated that the government could not hold persons of any race without cause. I believe that’s due process. Which effectively ended internment.

    And the NSA collecting on US citizens on US soil IS illegal. And they know it. I’m right about this. Look it up.

  41. There’s a good bit of detail missing from that quote, and obviously a lot more missing from in the Guardian reportage it was taken from.

    His “covert” job is described as “maintaining computer network security”, which is hardly as glamorous as some folks are trying to make that out to be. If you’re maintaining network security in a foreign office, you’re still not much more than a grunt, but need “cover” simply for general security purposes. The fact that it was Geneva? Meh. I don’t see anything particularly hinky about this sequence of events IF (IF?), in fact, this guy is truly a computer whiz.

  43. How long ago were you in? And what you’re describing…those guys don’t have access to any real information. They update programs and debug stuff. This guy wouldn’t have been authorized to get what he got if he was what you are saying. And even those guys get poly’ed today.

    The point is…there are some things that aren’t adding up here for me. Either his story about the program is off, or his story about himself is off. I just want to know which.

  44. It’s been a while (ASA, which should give you an idea). And it’s not what I’m saying – it’s what’s in the reportage, for whatever that’s worth.

    Either way, NSA’s compartmentalization of information, I’m guessing, hasn’t likely changed much. That is, communications monitoring – the stuff Snowden exposed – is a lower level access than our own actual communications and crypto, which is much higher level, as it should be.

  45. When I was in the SIGINT community (the part that was out in the bushes far, far away from NSA) we were PROMISED 25 years in Leavenworth if we used our gear to snoop on American civilians.

  46. Same here. In sixteen years as a 98G with various active & reserve MI units (1980-92), I was never asked to take a polygraph despite having a TS(SI) clearance. Whiz in a bottle, yes, but that was a different issue.

  47. Actually, things have changed. But that’s not really the point.

    My problem with his story is that if he’s just an IT grunt, he still wouldn’t have access to it, no matter what his clearance level was. Need-to-know being what it is. On the other hand, if he was more…then how did get there in 4 years with a GED?

    I mean you don’t find this a little…strange?

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