Time delays can inconvenience applicants and waste significant resources. Both the Government and private industry can lose qualified applicants who do not have the patience or resources to wait, sometimes up to a year or more, to find out whether or when they can begin work. The GAO has estimated that these processing delays cost the Government $920 million a year in productivity losses;8 these costs will only increase as delays worsen. To alleviate the delays in the clearance process, adjudicative Derogatory Information Minor Derogatory: Information that, by itself, is not of sufficient importance or magnitude to justify an unfavorable administrative security clearance determination. Moderate Derogatory: Information on the basis of which an unfavorable administrative security clearance determination may not necessarily be made, but which obligates the investigative agent to pursue its development. Significant Derogatory: Information that could, in itself, justify an unfavorable administrative action, or prompt an adjudicator to seek additional investigation or clarification. Establishing fast-track adjudications would eliminate a Addressing Transparency and Due Process Concerns Most agencies make little effort to disseminate any information regarding the personnel security process to applicants, contractors, and employees subject to investigation or reinvestigation. These individuals thus remain largely uninformed with respect to basic, unclassified information concerning the overall process, the length of time it takes, the standards applied, and their own status. For example, personnel security officials from one agency reported that approximately While Executive Order 12968 attempts to address other concerns about the fairness of the personnel security process, it does not include provisions that are designed to improve the basic understanding and transparency of the process. Applicants or employees who have their clearances denied, suspended, or revoked, and who are not provided a reason, are effectively denied due process, even though Executive Order 12968 explicitly calls for improvements in this regard. Allocating Resources More Effectively Shortcomings in the initial screening process appear to account, at least in part, for the Data from the PERSEREC and Project SLAMMER, a study of post-World War II espionage cases, confirm that few persons join the Government or begin contractor employment with the intent of committing espionage. 10 The main threat instead comes from trusted "insiders," those who already hold clearances and only much later in their careers decide to commit espionage. Even so, the personnel security system established under Executive Order 10450 consistently has allocated most resources to the initial clearance process, based on the once-prevailing concerns about the Soviet Union and its allies placing espionage agents inside the U.S. Government. The Difficulties of Talking to Neighbors "The neighbors are never at home unless it is in the evening or on the weekend, and often do not want to talk to strangers, regardless where they say they are from. Single women often will not open their doors for someone they don't know, regardless of whether he or she has a badge. Possibly the biggest problem is that neighbors do not want to say anything that can potentially subject them to a lawsuit." --Intelligence Community Investigators This focus on the initial clearance has shortchanged the allocation of resources and attention to reinvestigations and continuing assessment programs. Continuing assessment programs and reinvestigations often are the first areas subjected to budget cuts. For example, the DIS announced in 1995 that, due to diminishing resources, it could no longer conduct periodic reinvestigations on a routine basis and would establish an annual 5 percent ceiling on all counterintelligence-scope polygraphs for current employees. While this policy was later modified to place decisions on initiating reinvestigations with the heads of agencies (after senior NSA officials voiced concern), questions regarding the quality of reinvestigations have not been addressed. In a period of declining resources, the Federal Government also should target its security dollars toward the most productive elements of the investigation: those that yield the most substantial information relevant to the clearance decision. The most productive source overall for developing derogatory information, according to a 1996 PERSEREC report, was the person under investigation: the report noted that in 81 percent of the cases in which incriminating information was uncovered, the individual subject provided such information through the interview or on the personnel security questionnaire.11 Some elements of an initial background investigation are much more productive than others; those that are the most productive include interviews with former spouses and employers, medical professionals, relatives, and listed or developed character references. The least productive sources include neighborhood interviews, which are also the most expensive and time consuming.13 Interviews with education references also are not productive, according to this and other studies. 12 The limited utility of neighborhood interviews should not be surprising. The practice of interviewing neighbors is based on a vision of America as it once was-with individuals living in the same geographic areas most of their lives, enabling investigators to glean useful information from local sources with relative ease. Today, this is less often the case, given greater personal mobility, privacy concerns, and the litigiousness of society. When the difficulty of gaining access to neighbors and the time and substantial expense of the procedure are also factored in, the notion that neighborhood interviews should be done routinely as part of every background investigation requires reassessment. The Security Policy Board has implicitly acknowledged the limited usefulness of neighborhood interviews by agreeing to limit their scope to three years for Top Secret/ SCI clearances. The Commission believes that the time has come to go further; in view of the limited resources often available and the need to prioritize, it is important to focus on the most productive elements of the personnel security investigation. The Commission recommends the following steps to reallocate investigative resources and focus on the most productive aspects of the investigation. Recommendation The Commission recommends that current requirements for Under the above proposal, neighborhood interviews and checks of educational references still would be allowed where personnel security officials believe that the information yielded from these interviews would be productive; they simply would not be required in every investigation. This proposed approach is consistent with the critical objective of achieving increased reciprocity through greater standardization of personnel security procedures; it would promote common standards across the Government that make sense in view of existing resource constraints. Greater attention needs to be directed toward making continuing evaluation programs more effective. For example, using existing public and private data bases—with the express advance permission of the individual under review-to periodically scan for criminal history, as well as for credit, travel, and business history, normally would provide more accurate information at less cost than standard field reinvestigations. Personnel security professionals could monitor the behavior and activities of cleared personnel on a continuous basis in a more effective, cost-efficient, and nonintrusive manner. Given the evidence that there is little likelihood of catching spies through the current standard investigative or reinvestigative process, better continuing assessment programs could enhance the probability of deterring or identifying espionage activities. Recommendation The Commission recommends that greater balance be Most of the information needed is already available on existing databases; private industry experiences suggest that efforts to utilize automation to access such data can be very cost-effective as well as productive. Nevertheless, because some automated tools can be expensive, a cost-benefit assessment should be completed prior to utilizing them. Resources should be focused on those individuals in the most sensitive positions or where there is some evidence of suspect behavior; in an era of diminishing resources and frequent budget cuts, more effective continuing assessment can be accomplished only by concentrating on the areas of greatest vulnerability. In addition, those holding what are identified as the most sensitive positions could be subjected to more frequent, "in house" reviews similar to the personnel reliability programs used by the Defense and Energy Departments, as described above. These measures provide a costeffective way to monitor and assess employees with greater regularity and frequency, but without necessarily having to direct additional resources toward the traditional field investigation. Strengthening Employee Assistance Programs The focus on the initial investigation has also limited the attention and resources given to programs intended to assist current employees. These programs, generally termed Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), are critical in ensuring that employees can receive professional assistance if they face serious personal problems. Despite a requirement in the Federal Employee Substance Abuse Education and Treatment Act of 1986, as well as evidence of their benefits, standards for EAPs across the Federal Government do not exist. Furthermore, it is often not clear to the employee whether attending an EAP would harm his or her career. Both the quality of such programs and the resources made available for them also vary widely from agency to agency. The Commission therefore supports efforts to strengthen these programs. According to 1994 figures, 79,742 employees turned to EAPS for help.14 The cost for EAPs varies considerably, ranging from $8 to $50 per employee.15 Although some employees may never seek the help that they need, others may seek or can be directed to seek mental health or job counseling, as shown in Figure 5. While the number of individuals who did not commit espionage as a result of successful counseling is impossible to quantify, helping cleared employees cope with their personal problems almost certainly will deter some incidents of espionage and other major security breaches. The maintenance of confidentiality is and should remain a key element of such programs. Employees having emotional and financial difficulties are less likely to seek counseling if there is a perception that confidentiality is either nonexistent or poorly maintained, and that reprisals from security officials are possible. For example, convicted spy James Hall reportedly had sought help for his alcoholism from a military EAP, but declined to return after a counselor warned that attending one could damage his career. Confidentiality policies for EAPS should include nondisclosure of files and information garnered during the course of counseling, except in cases where confidentiality is prohibited by law (such as when there is admission of child abuse, intent to do harm, or other criminal activity). Source: Office of Personnel Management, Fiscal One additional issue with respect to EAPS is whether contractor Assessing the Value of Financial Disclosure Under the 1995 Intelligence Authorization Act, all Executive Branch employees with access to "particularly sensitive classified information" must complete a financial disclosure form. In April 1995 (while what became Executive Order 12968 was still under interagency review), Acting Director of Central Intelligence William Studeman announced that all CIA employees and agency contractors would be required to submit annual financial disclosure forms. Executive Order 12968, issued in August 1995, requires that the "head of each agency" designate those employees (including industrial contractors, members of the Armed Forces, and civilian employees) who would be subject to this reporting requirement. Studies, including Project SLAMMER, demonstrate that interest in financial gain is one of the leading motivations for espionage and other criminal activities.16 Primarily as a |