Manning's former supervisor: "I should have known"

[struggle4progress]

Nov 08

... In 2009, Showman .. was tasked with controlling security clearances for her unit and keeping secure facilities safe. She tells Pelley that even before the unit deployed to Iraq, she had grave concerns about Manning. His behavior was erratic, she says, and he told her he had "no allegiance" to America. But when she tried to alert her superiors, she says, she was told they couldn't afford to lose someone with a valuable top-secret clearance.

In Iraq, Manning was prone to fits of rage, Showman says, even punching her at one point. She says she also saw him bring CDs and a camera into a high-security intelligence vault, where classified material was kept. Over eight months, Manning used the CDs to record hundreds of thousands of secrets, delivering them to the website WikiLeaks ...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chelsea-manning-former-supervisor-i-should-have-known/

[struggle4progress]

1. Former officials: Process for granting security clearances broken

By Bradford Richardson
11/08/15 07:00 PM EST

... During a “60 Minutes” episode airing Sunday night, multiple officials pointed to several high-profile cases in which personnel should not have been granted security clearances, citing the cases of fugitive Edward Snowden, convicted spy Bradley Manning and mass murderer Aaron Alexis.

“Aaron Alexis should never have been granted a security clearance,” former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton said.

Stockton said Alexis, who murdered 12 of his colleagues in the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shooting, had a violent history that should have disqualified him from his post.

“That kind of violent behavior, that problem of impulse control, that should have been a prime signal this person is not, repeat, is not appropriate to have the trust associated with a security clearance,” Stockton said ...

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/259505-former-officials-process-for-granting-security-clearances-broken

[Recursion]

5. The problem is they spend 90% of their time looking at foreign contacts

Even for people who... wait for it... have been overseas on orders: they check up on literally everyone you had any social contact with. They do this before they run a criminal record or credit check. It's absolutely asinine.

(I'm strongly against credit checks for 90% of jobs, but a TS-cleared position seems like one that really needs one, and they should probably do that first. As it is, they run the background contact check and even grant an interim clearance before they run a $*ing simple credit check.)

[MADem]

2. Showman did her job--her superior(s), though...what assholes.

They were so desperate to have a butt on the bus (or the plane) w/a clearance, they took the ticking time bomb with them.

And had the clearance been properly executed, they would have found Manning was a poor candidate for one in the first place, due to fits of rage.

[Recursion]

4. I don't think the SF-86 includes "do you have fits of rage?"

"Do you have any allegiance to the United States?" is a pretty big one, though.

[MADem]

6. The adjudicators and investigators could have found that out by running a simple police check

in the towns where he lived--he had to put all of his addresses for the last ten years on the SF-86. There was a 911 call on file by his stepmother, asking for help because he was having "fits of rage." He threatened her with a knife. You can hear the 911 call at this link:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wikileaks/bradley-manning/bradley-manning-911-call/

After attending high school in Wales, where his mother moved after his parents' divorce, Bradley returned to the U.S. and moved in with his father Brian and his new wife in Oklahoma City. Brian tells FRONTLINE that his son was "a different person" when he returned and that there was tension over money, the house rules and Bradley's relationship with his stepmother.

Years later, Bradley would claim he was kicked out of the house for being gay, but his father tells a different story. Bradley had become increasingly erratic at work and lost his job at a software company after a heated confrontation with his boss.

At home, the tensions reached a boiling point. In March 2006, a family argument became violent -- Bradley allegedly threatened his stepmother with a knife -- and police were called to the Manning home.

His initial enlistment documents --that plainly, no one looked at, said he joined the military to unscrew up his screwed up life, in essence. He was a low-quality recruit, and he should not have been accessed, nor should he have been given ANY sort of clearance at all.

[Recursion]

7. But, as seen, they grant interim clearances before they do criminal checks

And by the time they do them, there's so much pressure from the staffed agency that it's difficult to withdraw the interim.

[MADem]

8. They need to go back to the old shoe leather days, where they'd show up and interview people.

And I think they should just bite the bullet and do it right. Nothing higher than confidential until the shit clears.

I can't tell you how many times I've been put on that damn form as a "reference" and had the tag team show up to ask me if I remembered if so-and-so was a boozer or spent money like a (pardon the pun) drunken sailor, or fooled around, or what-have-you.

That Walker mess was not all that long ago, big picture--have we learned nothing?

[Lee-Lee]

11. For my last secret renewal they didn't talk to any references

None!

I submitted the SF-86 and it was back in like 40 days.

[Recursion]

3. Wait... he (at the time) got blank optical media and cameras inside a classified enclosure?

That's... insane.

[MADem]

9. Didn't they have cameras going in and out of the SCIF?

You've got to wonder how that joint was run. Bringing anything in--or out--of that place should have been the Drill From Hell if they were doing it right.

[Lee-Lee]

10. Yeah, that's insane. A whole lot of failures here

The clearance never should have been issued. The units security manager should have revoked the clearnace based on behavior and statements.

And no way in hell he should should have been able to carry cameras and recordable media into the work space.