Security Clearance Jobs Blog

On December 21, 2010 Congress passed the 2010 Anti-Border Corruption Act (S. 3243 [Enrolled]) affecting polygraph examinations and periodic reinvestigations of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) law enforcement officers (LEO).

The bill made the following findings:

• Since 2003, 129 CBP officials have been arrested on corruption charges
• During 2009, 576 investigations were opened on allegations of improper conduct by CBP officials.
• CBP policy requires all applicants for LEO positions to receive a polygraph examination and a background investigation before being offered employment and a periodic reinvestigation every 5 years.
• In 2009, less than 15 percent of applicants for CBP LEO positions received polygraph examinations.
• As of March 2010, CBP had a backlog of approximately 10,000 periodic reinvestigations.
• Without additional resources, by the end of fiscal year 2010, the backlog of periodic reinvestigations will increase to approximately 19,000.

Without providing any additional funding, the bill requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that within 2 years all applicants for LEO positions in CBP receive polygraph examinations before being hired and that within 180 days periodic reinvestigations be initiated on CBP LEO personnel as required.

The bill itself is a scant 2 pages, but the report that accompanies the bill is longer and provides background on the corruption problems CBP has encounter due to rapid growth and targeting by Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).  The report indicates that:

• CBP has stated that they want to administer the [polygraph] exam to all applicants, but they have not been given the resources necessary to accomplish this. Of those applicants who do take a polygraph test, CBP finds 60 percent of them ineligible for employment, primarily due to prior drug use or a criminal history that the applicant had not previously disclosed.
• Mexican DTOs supply illicit narcotics to 230 U.S. cities, and they utilize a broad range of tactics to ensure the successful transport of their narcotics. These tactics include bribery and intimidation of U.S. law enforcement personnel, particularly those charged with securing the border and interdicting contraband.
• DTOs have been attempting to infiltrate [CBP] by sending drug traffickers to take the entrance examination.

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On December 1, 2010 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented testimony before a House subcommittee. The testimony was presented in the form of a report (GAO-11-232T) entitled: “Personnel Security Clearances: Overall Progress Has Been Made to Reform the Governmentwide Security Clearance Process.” The testimony covered 3 major long standing issues: a single federal database for clearance information, reciprocity, and timeliness.

The “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004” (IRTPA) “required that no later than 12 months after the date of its enactment, the Director of OPM and the Director of OMB establish and commence operating and maintaining a single, integrated database of security clearance information.” No single integrated database exists or is planned. Instead, OPM’s Central Verification System (CVS) provides a “single search” capability for about 90% of all investigations and clearances. Integrating the remaining 10% of Intelligence Community (IC) clearances remains problematic.

Government agencies reported requiring additional investigation and/or adjudication on some currently cleared individuals for reasons that are not permitted by existing reciprocity rules. Due to the absence of government-wide metrics for reciprocity, GAO was unable to measure the degree of non-compliance with clearance reciprocity requirements.

GAO acknowledged that significant improvements in timeliness of clearances had been made and that overall timeliness requirements of the IRTPA had been met. GAO noted that of the agencies they reviewed DOD, DOE, and NGA had consistently met the 60-day IRPTA requirement during the first three quarters of FY2010 (October 2009 to June 2010), and 11 other agencies had not. A chart on page 7 of GAO-11-232T reported timeliness for seven IC agencies and seven non-IC agencies.

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