Pentagon Employees With Top-Secret Security Clearance Owe Millions In Unpaid Taxes
Source: International Business Times
Some 83,000 Pentagon employees and contractors are tax deadbeats, to the collective tune of $730 million. And, roughly a quarter of them had top-secret security clearance, an internal government audit shows.
It’s yet another reason the U.S. security clearance system is under scrutiny after high-profile former employees such as Edward Snowden started to reveal classified information.
“Federal laws do not prohibit an individual with unpaid federal taxes from holding a security clearance, but delinquent tax debt poses a potential vulnerability,” the Government Accountability Office report says. “Because these clearances may allow personnel to access classified information that, through unauthorized disclosure, can in some cases cause exceptionally grave damage to the U.S. national security, investigators and adjudicators are to thoroughly assess applicants and their eligibility.”
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/pentagon-employees-top-secret-security-clearance-owe-millions-unpaid-taxes-1642024
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gerogie2
(450 posts)People that owe taxes are not going to start selling State secrets for owing taxes.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Debt makes people do desperate things.
JoeyT
(6,785 posts)Otherwise, why run credit checks on people applying for security clearance, and deny them if their credit is bad enough?
It's only the number 1 reason for denying or revoking security clearance, so I guess it must be pretty far down their list of priorities.
Response to JoeyT (Reply #12)
gerogie2 This message was self-deleted by its author.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)If they owe taxes it means they probably owe other money also. That makes them a security risk.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Somehow, that doesn't bother me.
EffYoo
(6 posts)by the accurate average? I don't want to unkind, so I'll just say try again.
Dustlawyer
(10,494 posts)
bornskeptic
(1,330 posts)candelista
(1,986 posts)
TygrBright
(20,755 posts)Northrup Grumman is a contractor.
Wonder how much they owe.
curiously,
Bright
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)
bemildred
(90,061 posts)
mark67
(196 posts)which are filled with colorful tales about the seduction of Private Lonetree by a beautiful Russian agent, sex blackmail, Aldrich Ames beating the lie detector test by staying awake all night so he'd be relaxed, Cold War ideologues, etc..
He admitted in a moment of candor that almost all of the people who sold US secrets (1) were uninteresting, boring types (2) had access (3) wanted copious amounts of money in return (4) were NOT ideologues and (5) shared a sociopathic disregard for the consequences.
In other words, almost all of them had nothing in common with the individuals we talked about during the briefing. When I asked him why he had no comment.
Hubert Flottz
(37,726 posts)We'd be heading for the federal slammer.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)
- A Police State is built one brick at a time.....
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[/center]happyslug
(14,779 posts)To get such a Clearance all you have to be is, after a quick check, not a KNOWN member of a subversive group (KKK or the Communist Party). They MAY do a Credit Check, but bad credit rarely indicates a bad security risk (If you can NOT pay your bills, but you admit so and do not pay your bills, where is the potential for blackmail or bribery?).
A Criminal history would make someone ineligible for Secret Clearance, writing a bad check and NOT honoring that check could be grounds NOT to get a Secret Clearance. On the other hand, Not paying a debt is not criminal, thus no criminal liability possible. Such a not payment of a debt may lead to someone being sued but what harm can it do to the holder of the clearance? Unless he or she is actually trying to pay the debt and does not have the money to do so EXCEPT with money from Espionage. such bad debt does not indicate a tendency to do espionage (In most cases the situation is NOT debts, but people buying items and living beyond their means for they could do so based on the brides they took)
Security is watching for someone who MAY be blackmailed (Thus homosexual activity was grounds for denial of s Security clearance for decades, through that is not the case in the last 20 years) OR someone can be easily bribed (For example, someone actually TRYING to pay a debt as oppose to someone who is NOT trying and cares less if the creditor sues them or not, through it is more like buying a new Cadillac every year instead of every five years for other people of his or her pay grade).
Secret and Top Secret Clearances generally has to do with access to codes, radios, advance technical manuals, personnel records etc. It rarely involved anything that is really secret, but things that could help someone learn how US units move, operate, what is the standard procedures in certain situations etc. Classification above "Top Secret" is itself Classified often on a need to know basis, this involved how bases are set up, secret bases, for example underground submarine bases, access to codes that are used to transmit messages about company level, etc. Operation of advance computers and equipment is also subject to higher levels of Security then "Top Secret".
Just a comment that "Secret" and "Top Secret" Clearances are NOT that much of a Security Clearance. They are the first steps in the Security clearance system, but very low level of clearance. Many people in the Military have "Secret" and "Top Secret" Clearances (I even had one, learned about it when it was withdrawn in the 1990ws during the last scare of to many people with "Secret" Security Clearances). It is the higher level of Security we need to worry about, the people with security clearances higher then "Top Secret", those are the people who have the information our enemies want, not how to operate radios and codes in a combat unit at company level. This is the level where the CIA spy for the Russians, Ames operated at. This is the level the FBI agent who spied for the Russians operated at. i.e. well ABOVE "Secret" and "Top Secret" Clearance levels. Ames was caught by the FBI doing a check on his spending and determining he was spending more then his income permitted. The FBI Spy, Robert Hanssen was only caught by the FBI paying a Russian Agent $7 million Dollars for the Russian folder on the spy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames
Just a comment that "Secret" and "Top Secret" Clearances are NOT that high a clearance AND that being in debt does NOT make someone subject to Blackmail or bribery (The Russians prefer bribery, you get someone who WANTS to spy for you, as opposed to someone you are forcing to spy for you). Thus you look at how someone is living, is he or she living within their means? If yes rarely a spy problem, if no, why? Living below one's income indicates bad choices (gambling, drugs use etc) but living ABOVE your income brings with it HOW and that is generally because of bribes.
mark67
(196 posts)...according to Top Secret Nation, 854k Americans have a Top Secret (TS) clearance or higher. That's almost 1:300, which seems excessive.
Civilian side obviously different, but TS is a big deal in the military. (Bradley Manning I think had a TS clearance) It can be revoked for just about any type of lapse in judgment (DUI, chronic indebtedness, domestic problems, discipline problems, etc...) According to an article I read there were multiple red flags that something was wrong with Manning.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Thus to get the information you must get Clearance. This also permit people to control who has access and thus they own power structure within the Government. Scientists complain that they often have to redo what other Scientists have done because it was so classified that they had no access to the data. In the post Cold War Era, we saw the release of such information during the last time Classification of Secrets came up. For example, the US finally released it last classified papers from WWI, turned out how to things when captured and where to look for things when you Captured someone. That information had been known otherwise for centuries, but someone classified it during WWI and stayed "Secret" till the 1990s.
The final piece of data showing the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean was released. This data showed that the Atlantic Ocean has been expanding for millions of years, but also that the Magnetic poles do switch. These had been proposed as theories for decades, but that the iron in the outflows where the Atlantic Ocean was expanding from clearly showed which way was "Magnetic North" when the iron was liquid as it flowed from the cut in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The US Navy took note of this (as did the Soviet Navy) for it affected not only their compasses but their electronics and immediately classified it. When the Soviet Union Collapsed, they released they information on it, and fearing that scientists wanted conformation of it and thus demand the Navy to release its study on those flows, the US Navy followed. This is also true of Satellite studies of the planet that provided some of the best evidence yet of global warming.
Notice all of this was classified, and in many ways the question was why? In some cases the answer Security (The iron flows of the Atlantic would affect the electronic instrument on a submarine above those flows). but it often forced people to spend money on similar research to come up with the same data (As in the case of the WWI secret material AND the research on mid Atlantic Ocean flows and the gradual decline in the magnetic field over the last 125,000 years AND that such declines occurred in the past, must before a massive switch in the Magnetic field, AND that such switches occur in conjunction with the Sun spot maxs and mins for the Sunspot Max and Mins had been known for decades to be conjunction with a switch in the magnetic field of the sun that occurs about every 22 years).
I bring this up, for the above data represented POWER, and who had the POWER over that information had POWER over who had access to that data AND how such people could use that DATA. In many ways, we have to many things Classified, that should be public records, including how much money is spent by the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agencies. Our enemies know, for all they have to do is tear apart the US Budget and see the differences between what agency actually gets to spend and what it was allocated. Between those two numbers is where the CIA and NSA's budgets are hidden. For example if the US Army gets an allocation for 50,000 M-16 rifles at $1000 a piece, but only gets 40,000, the difference 10,000 rifles at $1000 a piece, is really 1 million dollars set aside for the NSA and/or CIA. Congress does a better job of hiding such items then in my example, but it is done all the time. Another way to hide the funds to the CIA and NSA is to allocate the funds to a long dead office, thus $1 million to the office of mule procurement.
Our Enemies have the resources and time to tear apart the US Budget and determine how much we are spending, but the American People do not (and they are laws passed in the 1980s that prevents people from saying what the CIA and NSA are spending, if they can determine what that is).
I go into the above, for one of the problems with the level of clearances is to much data is classified and a purge of that data is needed. When the Atomic Bomb was made, the US military issued a book on nuclear research involved in that development. Most of what we know on making a Nuclear weapon is from that book. The book was a key to classifying what was to be secret about how to make an atomic bomb, by releasing all most everything about how to make an atomic bomb except the most critical parts. That book went into how much nuclear material was needed, it purity, and even the construction of the bomb. How to get U-235 that pure was classified (Through the basic technique was NOT Classified). That Plutonium could NOT be all put into one area, like U-235 and just smashed together as in Uranium bomb, but the Plutonium had to be put into up to 16 different areas, all design to smash all 16 pieces of Plutonium together at the same time so a nuclear reaction would set in. That is all NON-CLASSIFIED. If you need more, you have to have a certain level of Clearance.
The Book on Nuclear Research was a key part of Classifying Nuclear Research. It released most data, but kept what was considered critical secret. That same type of classification has to be done in regards to other areas of secrets, but it is rarely done. Thus we know more about how to build a Nuclear bomb then we know about what the CIA did in Central America in the 1960s or what data the NSA is actually collecting and storing. When you compare both to how we classified Nuclear Secrets, you see we have to many secrets, more to avoid embarrassing someone then to keep the Country safe. We have to adopt strict rules on Classification, including PUBLIC data saying what are the guidelines for Classification and a way that people who uses or have access to the data can ask someone who does NOT control the secret to release the data to the public. At present the person who controls the data, controls its Classification and that often leads to over classification. Some sort of check is needed on over classification, the present system is NOT working, to much data is being kept Secret for to long without good reasons.