#Security clearances

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.

The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets.

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.”

Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.”

Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.

While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.

“The President called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.

While likely an attempt by McConnell at deflecting from his lapse, Biden’s age has emerged as a clear concern to voters, including Democrats. 69% of Democrats say Biden is “too old to effectively serve” another term, an Associated Press-NORC poll found last month. The findings were echoed by a CNN poll released last week that found that 67% of Democrats said the party should nominate someone else, with 49% directly mentioning Biden’s age as their biggest concern.

As Commander In Chief, the President is the nation’s ultimate classification authority, with the extraordinary power to classify and declassify information broadly. No other American has as privileged access to classified information as the president.

The U.S.’s current leadership is not only the oldest in history, but also the number of older people in Congress has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1981, only 4% of Congress was over the age of 70. By 2022, that number had spiked to 23%.

In 2017, Vox reported that a pharmacist had filled Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. With little incentive for an elected official to disclose such an illness, it is difficult to know just how pervasive the problem is. Feinstein’s retinue of staffers have for years sought to conceal her decline, having established a system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone and risk having an unsupervised interaction with a reporter.

Despite the public controversy, there’s little indication that any officials will resign — or choose not to seek reelection.

After years of speculation about her retirement, 83-year-old Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stunned observers when she announced on Friday that she would run for reelection, seeking her 19th term.

[smalltofedsblog]

‘America’s Gatekeeper’ Has A Message For Small Defense Contractors

DCSA is a lesser-known Pentagon agency you must get to know if you’re a small business hoping to break into the multi-billion dollar defense contracting arena.

[clowncollegevaledictorian]

hey carla my love how the fuck did you know who the beast is

[drgertiefremontphd]

page 9

[cocotome]

Interviews with the Lovebrush Chronicles men after the Harp Island Elite Conference.

[oceantornadoo]

i feel like john price is the best airport companion to exist

[bittersweetbonbon]

i love it when o5s are just. literal shadow creatures. not even identifiable as human anymore. they're a different species entirely. just a number and silhouette. that's all they need to be.

[pitynostars]

rose temple noble should not be at a gold security secret organisation tower fighting the god of death she should be in SCHOOL.

[heich0e]

here r my visual impressions of the blue lock boys as someone who knows nothing abt blue lock based on that hot pepper beauty official art:

yoichi - looks like a boy your parents would be happy to see you bring home (but they should not be)

bachira - looks like the kind of guy whose mugshot would go viral n ppl would be making edits etc bc he's cute even tho his crime was extremely violent. he bites (and you need a rabies shot)

chigiri - looks like he could sell u something. anything. idek what but i'd buy it

nagi - looks like the ghost of a little boy who died 200 years ago and haunts ur house but is actually pretty chill! like a roommate

reo - looks like he uses ai to write his term papers but is also student body president? white collar criminal and child of generational wealth

rin - looks like the poster child for the expression "traumatize them back"

[soath]

vox machina: half of a coed secret society currently facing university crackdown due to excessive rowdiness and flagpole scaling get a sizable townhouse; there they handle lizard escapes, child support requests, police scrutiny, many villainous professors, and members who won't stop getting engaged to each other.

the mighty nein: paranoid houseboat owners renting the absolutely cheapest moorings at a marina in a midsized european canal city band together against judgemental neighbors/local boat safety inspections/the concept of decay/ecosystem degradation in their waterways/their own dark pasts/two art-student ass cults; against all odds succeed at everything.

bell’s hells: posters on a queer housing page in toronto pack 6-11 people (depending on the day) into a two bedroom; ping-pong between icily polite spy warfare and cloying codependence, all while ostensibly working together to save a critically endangered species of salamander—end up involved in years old industrial drama opposing their friend’s shady mining corporation mom.

[idk-bruh-20]

Irondad fic ideas #128

Fic where, after a security incident in which some bozo accused Peter of trespassing at Stark Tower, Happy holds an emergency briefing for the entire SI security team.

The topic of the briefing? The absolutely untouchable, vital-to-know-if-you-want-to-keep-your-job level of importance of one Peter Parker

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

House Republicans are moving to effectively strip security clearances from any intelligence or defense official who signed on to an October 2020 statement that raised the question of whether the release of Hunter Biden's emails was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

As part of a much-larger bill funding US defense, Republicans on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense proposed prohibiting any funding to grant, renew, or maintain a security clearance for any official who signed the statement.

More than 50 former intelligence officials, including former CIA Directors Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan, signed the letter raising questions about the then newly published New York Post story concerning emails from Biden's laptop. Politico reported at the time that the letter was provided to the publication by Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under Brennan.

The letter did not propose any evidence of Russian action or even explicitly suggest that Moscow was behind the story. Rather, the letter said the circumstances surrounding its publication raised significant doubt.

"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal Attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case," they wrote in the letter.

Twitter restricted sharing of the New York Post's article, an action that has been widely criticized by its new owner, Elon Musk, and scores of Republicans.

Years later, The Washington Post commissioned two security experts who verified thousands of emails from the hard drive that contained copies of Biden's emails, photos, and other messages and that was left at a Delaware computer-repair store.

Rep. Betty McCollum, the top Democrat on the defense-related appropriations panel, slammed Republicans for including the provision in the bill.

"Is it the role of this committee to ban individuals from having security clearances for signing their name to a letter — expressing their opinions as ordained in the Constitution?" McCollum of Minnesota said in her opening remarks. "Section 8150 does just that."

The inclusion of so-called policy riders in much-larger funding bills is commonplace in Washington, especially bills funding US troops and the Pentagon. While some of these policies become law, many are often stripped out when the Democratic-led Senate passes its own legislation.

McCollum added that Republicans were setting a dangerous precedent if they wanted to plow ahead with their proposal.

"If we want to take this committee down a road of punitive action, I have plenty of members of the Trump administration who I think should never hold security clearances again based on their actions surrounding January 6," she said.

[smalltofedsblog]

Navigating Security Clearance Processing

There is little instant gratification within the security clearance process. It is the applicant’s or current holder’s own filing with security that impacts with significance how fast processing takes.

[oscarp81astri]

For FREE DANIEL?? YOURE GIVING THIS TO US FOR FREE???

[speedlimit15]

applied to be a receptionist at the dispensary down the street from me, fingers crossed they call me back. i’d love to sit at a computer and look at IDs and smell weed all day

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Roxy in a Jurassic Bark fic where the biggest struggle is finding loopholes in the security rules so she can show Monty and Chica everything she's found whilst exploring all the high security areas.

Like yeah they physically can't walk through the door to this discontinued attraction, but Roxy can take a lot of pictures! Yeah they can't use some of the old software Roxy found preinstalled in her head that lets her interact with a different discontinued attraction, but she can find the stuff they sold to the public so they could interact with it for them! Yeah she can't tell them all about their predecessors she found deactivated in the basement, but she can sneak them out of the basement to meet them for themselves! They can't play all the games to win all the prizes they want, but Roxy can dismantle some of them and reassemble them in areas they can reach!

Suuurreee she can't do everything, but Roxy has been finding loopholes for unfair rules and systems her entire life, she's not gonna stop just because she's in charge of keeping a murderbot at bay. She's got too much spite in her soul to make it easy on the higher ups!