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41–733 2008

SECURITY CLEARANCE REFORM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY 

MANAGEMENT 

OF THE

PERMANENT SELECT 

COMMITTEE 

ON INTELLIGENCE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

Hearing held in Washington, DC, February 27, 2008 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee 


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(II) 

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE 

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas, Chairman 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

ROBERT E. (BUD) CRAMER, Alabama 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey 

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

MIKE THOMPSON, California 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan 

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

JOHN M. MCHUGH, Texas 

TODD TIAHRT, Kansas 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

NANCY PELOSI, California, Speaker, Ex Officio Member 

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Minority Leader, Ex Officio Member 

MICHAEL DELANEY, Staff Director 


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HEARING ON SECURITY CLEARANCES 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:31 a.m., in room 

340, Cannon House Office Building, the Hon. Anna G. Eshoo 

(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Eshoo, Holt, Ruppersberger, Tiahrt, 

and Issa. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Okay, I think we will begin. 

Good morning, everyone. I thank you for being here. 

I again offer not only my apology but the apologies of the subcommittee for your very long wait in December. As I said to you 

informally, it was a day that quickly turned into chaos with all 

that we had on the floor. And your time is just as important as everyone else’s, so, again, my apologies and also my welcome this 

morning for this important hearing. 

Security clearances are the gateway to our national security establishment. Everyone in the Intelligence Community has to possess a security clearance to do their job, not just government employees but also the contractors who build satellites, maintain computer systems and protect government officials. The security clearance process fundamentally affects who is hired by the Intelligence 

Community, how agencies share information and coordinate, and 

how well we deter and prevent espionage. 

For years, our security system was plagued by delays and inefficiencies. This hurt our national security, I believe, by making it 

harder to hire good people who couldn’t wait months or, in some 

cases, years to know if they have a job. It hurt contractors who 

couldn’t get clearances fast enough to bid on classified programs. 

The clearance system was primarily developed for the Cold War, 

when the concern was communism. In that environment, we tended 

to exclude people who had relatives overseas. This meant that our 

Intelligence Community was not very diverse. Today we need people who can blend this all over the world. We need people who understand the cultural context and speak the languages of countries 

where terrorists are likely to hide. 

When the clearance system was developed, we dealt in paper 

records, not electronic files. Investigators knocked on doors; I think, 

in many cases, they still do. Today, people make paperless, complex 

financial transactions over the Internet and use social-networking 

programs. So we have to find ways to leverage these technological 


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developments in the clearance process to both streamline the system and identify security risks. 

Three years ago, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and 

Terrorism Prevention Act. The legislation established some requirements for improving the security clearance process, governmentwide. 

The House Armed Services Committee recently held a similar 

hearing as this one to discuss the DOD’s progress on improving the 

security clearance process. Many of the agencies that this committee oversees are responsible for their own security clearance 

processes and, thus, may have a different perspective on the government’s progress. 

I hope the witnesses—and, again, welcome to each one of you— 

will address a few key questions. One, how does the Intelligence 

Community handle their security clearance process compared to 

the rest of the government? Two, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the Intelligence Community’s current security clearance 

process? Three, how do we evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot 

program for security clearance reform? Four, how do we ensure 

that the security clearance process helps meet our Nation’s goals 

to hire good people and to protect classified information? So those 

are the key areas I think that we need to explore. 

Today’s witnesses are the Honorable Clay Johnson, III, Deputy 

Director for Management at OMB; Mr. Eric Boswell, Assistant 

Deputy DNI for Security; Ms. Kathy Dillaman, Associate Director 

of the Federal Investigative Services at OPM; Ms. Brenda Farrell, 

the Director of Military and Civilian Personnel and Health Care— 

this is a real mouthful—Defense Capabilities and Management at 

the GAO. 

Mr. Johnson, Mr. Boswell and Ms. Dillaman will provide testimony about the efforts to transform the security clearance process, 

and Ms. Farrell is going to provide the members with historical 

perspective on the challenges we faced in the past with the security 

clearance process and what strengths and weaknesses exist in the 

current system. 

The GAO has issued many reports over the last decade, decade 

and a half. I have plowed through several of them, and they are 

highly instructive, and I thank you for your work. 

She is also going to advise committee members on what objective 

metrics we should use to evaluate the progress under the administration’s reform efforts. 

So we look forward to the witnesses’ testimony. 

And I would like to welcome and recognize Mr. Issa, another 

member of the California congressional delegation, who is the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee. 

Mr. Issa. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the California subcommittee of the House intelligence. 

Mr. Johnson, Ambassador Boswell, Ms. Dillaman and Ms. 

Farrell, there is nothing more bipartisan on the House Intelligence 

Committee than, in fact, getting the clearance process right. Your 

testimony is greatly appreciated. 

And reforming the security process will be the subject today, and 

I do appreciate that there have been improvements. The developVerDate Aug 31 2005 05:57 Apr 30, 2008 Jkt 041733 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A733.XXX A733

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ment of electronic forms and that reduction of paperwork and the 

continuity is a critical direction that was long overdue. 

But we still hear of major concerns in a number of areas, most 

notably the Arab, Muslim and the other communities of outreach 

most essential if we are to understand and be able to make effective contact in the areas that, today, occupy most of our defense 

and intelligence resources. 

Our intelligence community relies heavily upon domestic, human 

assets to analyze information from areas of the world that are 

quite alien to us. One of the most important and volatile areas of 

the world, the Middle East, is an area in which the people analyzing it often have no firsthand knowledge of that part of the 

world. Americans with such knowledge apply for security clearances every day, in hopes that they can serve their country in an 

intelligence capacity. Sadly, many applicants are turned down because of foreign contacts they maintain in the Middle East. 

While we need to ensure that security clearances only go to applicants whose loyalties to the United States are unquestionable, 

we should not assume that individuals’ allegiances are suspect simply because they have friends or family in the Middle East. The 

very reason they have detailed knowledge of the reason and its language and its customs is primarily because of those contacts and 

their history. 

The Intelligence Director, Mike McConnell, addressed this issue 

of hiring Arab and Muslim Americans at his nomination hearing 

over a year ago. Though he is not here today, I am interested to 

hear what the Intelligence Community has done under his leadership to improve the ability of Arab Americans and others to successfully apply for security clearances. 

Beyond the specific issue of Arab-American security clearances, 

Congress has tried to improve the security clearance process by 

placing certain provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism 

Prevention Act of 2004. That required the administration to drastically reduce timelines and modernize the process by leveraging 

technology. 

Unfortunately, we did not address the broader issues, such as 

how facility clearances are obtained and maintained, how information systems are certified and accredited. And I understand that, 

in addition to gaining personnel clearances, both the security-related issues greatly impact industry’s ability to deliver capability 

on behalf of the Nation’s security. In short, we do not have a system for a cleared defense contractor or contract person to go from 

facility to facility and take, in a seamless way, their capability with 

them. 

I appreciate the fact that the Intelligence Community has found 

ways to make it relatively easy for Members of Congress to travel 

around the world to both public and private places, and somehow 

our clearances quickly arrive, and we seem to always be wellscreened and immediately put through. It would be wonderful if 

that same level of capability were there for all of those who have 

real need to know and real contribution to give. 

Also, I understand the administration has designated the Office 

of Personnel Management, OPM, as the lead agency for security 


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clearance reform efforts. My question is, does the OPM own the entire end-to-end process? I rather doubt it. 

I understand that the impression that the OPM performed all 

background investigations is simply not true. The adjudication and 

access granted individually by each agency and each agency having 

their own individual process makes it impossible to truly say that 

the OPM is anything other than an interesting umbrella group. 

I am not proposing today that we strip individual agencies of 

their capability to make the final decisions, but it is very clear that 

if we are to have a 30-day or 60-day clearance process to become 

a reality, that we are going to have to have a single form, a single 

sheet, a single process, and ultimately a take-it-or-leave-it by the 

various agencies. That does not exist today. 

I am looking forward to your testimony and the questions beyond 

the scope of just this introduction. And I thank you very much for 

being here today. 

And hopefully OPM-bashing is not what you interpret that I am 

doing, but rather recognizing that, inherently, if we give a lead 

agency some authority but not all authority, we really give them 

no authority. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I yield back. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Issa. 

I call on Mr. Tiahrt, a diligent, thoughtful member of the subcommittee and the full committee. 

Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I guess I am from 

eastern California. 

Mr. ISSA. We will make you honorary for today only. 

Mr. TIAHRT. I am glad to be here from Kansas. I am very concerned about the clearances. I do have a hearing at 10 o’clock, and 

I am the ranking member and have to attend. But I appreciate the 

testimony and especially the good work the GAO has done. And I 

am looking forward to whatever the comments are going to be. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. 

Thank you for being here this morning. 

We will start with Ambassador Boswell, with his testimony, and 

move across the table. 

And I think, if I might suggest this, that you keep your comments brief or maybe summarize what you would like to say, so 

that we can have a good give-and-take in asking questions and 

really drill down to some of these areas. I know you come fully prepared. I don’t want you to think we are diminishing what you have 

to offer. But I think, in these hearings, the more we get to ask 

questions and hear your answers, there is a fullness of what we 

will draw out of the hearing. 

So, again, good morning. 

And thank you to you, Ambassador Boswell. This is your time. 


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STATEMENTS OF MR. ERIC BOSWELL, ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR SECURITY; HON. 

CLAY JOHNSON, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; MS. KATHY L. 

DILLAMAN, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FEDERAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES DIVISION, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT; MS. BRENDA S. FARRELL, DIRECTOR OF DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

STATEMENT OF ERIC BOSWELL 

Mr. BOSWELL. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I am happy to 

be here at this ‘‘California subcommittee.’’ I feel quite at home 

here; I am a California resident myself. 

Mr. ISSA. They will all move to California eventually. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Chairwoman Eshoo, Mr. Issa and distinguished 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be 

here to discuss security clearance reform. I am very pleased to be 

with my colleagues, Mr. Clay Johnson, Ms. Kathy Dillon, and my 

GAO colleague. 

As this subcommittee is very aware, the Intelligence Reform and 

Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the first-ever legislated measures of success with regard to the timeliness of security 

clearance processing with goals for 2006 and 2009. While helpful, 

these measures include only the investigation and adjudication segments of the process and do not, on their own, provide for end-toend process performance measures nor capture all of the opportunities for improvement that would result in a timelier, less burdensome process for applicants. 

While the Intelligence Community agencies that conduct their 

own investigations and adjudications are compliant with current 

IRTPA goals, the existing process is not, in our estimation, likely 

to allow these agencies to achieve the additional efficiencies to 

meet the 2009 objectives. 

Recognizing that transformational change will be required to 

meet such future need, the Director of National Intelligence has 

agreed that security clearance reform should be a top priority, as 

evidenced by its inclusion in his 100-day and 500-day plans. The 

DNI’s call for improvements to the security clearance process is 

matched by the Secretary of Defense, who has placed security 

clearance reform as one of the Department of Defense’s top transformation priorities. 

The intelligence and defense partnership on this issue is a driving force in shaping the efforts to achieve meaningful change. Together, these senior leaders established the Joint Security Clearance Process Reform Team, which I will call the Joint Team from 

here on. The two leaders of this team are behind me here: John 

Fitzpatrick, who is Director of the Special Security Center at the 

ODNI, and Elizabeth McGrath, who is a Deputy Under Secretary 

for Defense. 

The Joint Team conducts its activities with the oversight and 

concurrence of OMB and the participation of other agency partners. 

Most notable in this regard is OPM, whose Director has joined the 


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DNI, DOD and OMB as a champion of the newly integrated security and suitability reform effort. 

This expanded partnership highlights the finding that the process for determining eligibility for access to classified information, 

suitability for Federal employment, eligibility to work on a Federal 

contract, and granting access to federally controlled facilities and 

information systems rely on very similar background data. However, the processes for collecting and analyzing that data are not 

sufficiently coordinated. Therefore, the overall scope of the reform 

effort now encompasses aligning security clearances and Federal 

employment suitability to ensure that the executive branch executes these authorities within a framework that maximizes efficiency and effectiveness. 

The importance of this project was underscored on February 5th 

of this year when the President issued a memorandum acknowledging the work of the combined group and directing the heads of 

executive departments and agencies to provide all information and 

assistance requested by the Director of OMB in this important endeavor. 

The memo also directs the Director of OMB, the Director of 

OPM, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 

the DNI and the Secretary of Defense to submit to the President 

an initial reform proposal not later than April 30, 2008, that includes, as necessary, proposed executive and legislative actions to 

achieve the goals of this reform. 

In the current phase of its activity, the Joint Team is conducting 

concurrent work in three areas: information technology, policy development, and targeted demonstration activity that seeks to validate innovations in the new process design. 

The primary innovations driving the transformation involve the 

use of more automated processes and data-collection mechanisms 

that aim to significantly reduce processing times across the security clearance life cycle by eliminating manual, time-consuming 

processes. The new process proposes the use of new investigative 

tools, an end-to-end information management system, a continuous 

risk-management philosophy, and efficient standardized business 

practices. There is more detail on this in my statement for the 

record. 

While the Joint Team will make every effort to identify and recommend deployment of near-term improvements, it is equally important to note that end-to-end transformation across the government will take time, resources and the concerted effort of all implementing agencies. 

In another important area, an area that Mr. Issa mentioned in 

his statement, modifications to Intelligence Community hiring policies are being made to allow for the hiring of first- and second-generation Americans or ‘‘heritage’’ Americans. This effort includes 

careful consideration of ways to balance risk while increasing opportunity for such citizens to be considered by the clearance process. 

We have studied existing programs within the community that 

may offer a model for other IC agencies to build upon. We fully expect a near-term outcome of this DNI-level policy change to result 


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in more applications from heritage Americans and ultimately a 

more robust mission capability within the IC. 

I am confident that sufficient executive commitment exists to ensure that security clearance reform will be achieved. 

Madam Chairman, that concludes my statement, and I welcome 

any questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Boswell follows:] 


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Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. 

I would like to welcome to the hearing this morning Congressman Holt, another diligent, very thoughtful, intelligent member of 

this subcommittee. 

Mr. JOHNSON, WELCOME. And we look forward to your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF CLAY JOHNSON 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. Chairwoman Eshoo, Ranking Member 

Issa, members, thank you for having this hearing today. I will be 

very, very brief, so we can get to questions, and I will try not to 

duplicate what I know Kathy is going to talk about and what Eric 

has already talked about. 

I want to make it very clear to this committee that significant 

progress—significant progress—has been made to reform the security clearance process. Yes, the emphasis has been on improving 

the timeliness of the process, but that has been the primary problem. There are other issues, which you have identified in your 

opening statements, but the primary issue that we have been addressing here is the primary issue, which is timeliness. 

We talked about the opportunity for technology and paperless, 

quicker access to electronic records and so forth being a huge opportunity. Our focus to date, for the last 2 years, has been—while 

we have developed plans to pursue these other opportunities, our 

primary focus in the last 2 years has been on the basics, which is 

expand the capacity to do the work—that was the primary problem—and to improve the accountability for doing the work as called 

for. We have accomplished that. Kathy will talk about the investigative capacity expansion at OPM. But we have made significant 

strides. 

This is great, but we are not where anybody wants to be. The Intelligence Community I think reluctantly agrees that there has 

been some improvement, but they believe that there is more to go 

still, and we do too. And everybody wants to be at a different place 

than we are now, even though we have made significant strides. 

Currently, it takes too long to retrieve all records and information. It takes too long to adjudicate particularly industry requests. 

And it takes too long to move information and files around. 

Longer term, as Eric talked about, we need to transform the system. There is a very impressive effort under way, involving everybody, to make this happen. I am confident that we are going to end 

up where we want to be. 

One of the really fantastic parts about this process is everybody 

wants this to work. Everybody is committed to making this happen. 

Nobody likes any aspect of the current state of affairs. Industry 

wants it to change, agencies want it to change, you want it to 

change. There is not divisiveness on this. It is, ‘‘Let’s do it, let’s do 

it well, and let’s do it magnificently.’’ And that is our plan. And our 

goals are high, and we are working very hard on it and making 

great strides. 

[The statement of Mr. Johnson follows:] 


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Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. 

Ms. Dillaman. 

STATEMENT OF KATHY DILLAMAN 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Madam Chairwoman, it is my privilege to be here 

today to testify on behalf of the Office of Personnel Management 

and to provide you an update of the progress we have made thus 

far, plus our continuing reform efforts. 

As you know, OPM’s mission is to ensure the government has an 

effective civilian workforce. To accomplish this mission, we provide 

the background investigations for over 100 Federal agencies that 

are used to support suitability decisions and security clearance determinations. Last year, we conducted over 2 million investigations. 

As you noted, we are not responsible for all of the government’s 

background investigations, but we do handle 90 percent, with delegations to the Intelligence Community for the balance. We do, however, support the Department of Defense entirely, including their 

industrial clearance investigations. 

Since implementation of the Intelligence Reform Act, we have 

made significant progress in improving the overall timeliness and 

eliminating the backlog of investigations. We have focused on four 

critical areas that have to be managed effectively to make this 

progress efficient: first, workload projections; then the processes 

agencies use to request investigations; the investigations; and the 

adjudication processes. 

To staff the investigations and adjudications programs responsibly, clearance-granting agencies have to be able to project their 

workload needs annually. We have established a goal of a 5 percent 

margin, and significant progress has been made in getting agencies 

to project effectively. 

For the submission processes, that previously was a very laborintensive paper process, a form filled out every time you had to go 

through the process, again and again. We have expanded OPM’s 

Web-based online system. It is called the Electronic Questionnaires 

for Investigations Processing, e-QIP, which allows subjects to fill 

out their information online and eliminates the paper. This allows 

them to submit the request to their governing agency, and, in turn, 

they can submit the request to us. 

For the first quarter of fiscal year 2008, 83 percent of the clearance investigations we received to conduct were submitted electronically. Fourteen agencies and Department of Defense’s industry 

submissions are at 100 percent electronic submission. 

For investigations timeliness, the Intelligence Reform Act required that, by the end of the 2006, 80 percent of the background 

investigations for initial clearances be completed in an average of 

90 days or less. We have exceeded that statutory goal. In fact, of 

the 586,000 initial clearance investigations we received to process 

in fiscal year 2007, 80 percent were completed in an average of 67 

days. Top Secret took 92 days. Those are much more extensive. 

And Secret/Confidential took an average of 63 days. 

We have increased our staff to over 9,400 Federal and contractor 

employees. And, as a result, there is no backlog of investigations 

related to insufficient resources. While eliminating the backlog, we 


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have substantially reduced the time it takes to complete the investigations. 

Other factors have contributed to this improvement. Working 

closely with Federal, State and local agencies, we have improved 

processes for obtaining third-party information, getting the required records we need much faster. 

We are not done yet; there is still work to be done. But great improvements have been noted. 

We have worked closely with the Department of Defense and the 

State Department, and we have deployed an international team to 

get the required overseas coverage necessary. In fact, in 2007, we 

had 360 agents who were detailed abroad, and they completed 

more than 24,000 international contacts or record searches. 

While improving the timeliness of investigations, we have also 

been vigilant in maintaining the quality of those investigations. 

Our training programs and material, as well as our internal quality-control processes, ensure that the investigations we conduct 

meet the national investigative standards and the needs of the adjudication community. 

We are also continuing to work with the agencies to reduce the 

time it takes to deliver completed investigations between OPM and 

the adjudicating offices and for them to record their adjudication 

action in a central records system. This includes implementation of 

an imaging system that lets me move completed investigations in 

an electronic format to the adjudicating offices. 

Last year, we went online with Department of Army, and to date 

we have sent over 113,000 investigations to them electronically, 

making the process between OPM and Army virtually paperless. 

We anticipate up to 10 more agencies this year will come online 

with receiving electronic submissions. 

We are also continuing to optimize our current processes by 

maintaining adequate staffing, building partnerships with information suppliers, and through greater use of information technology. 

EPIC, which is our automated suite of tools that support investigations and adjudications, will allow for total, end-to-end paperless 

processing for those agencies that are prepared to use them. 

We are also partnering, as I noted, with the Office of the Director 

of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense for more 

significant reforms to the overall process. This reform effort is challenging traditional processes, from application through adjudication. The ultimate outcome will be a governmentwide system that 

continues to protect national security through modern processes 

that are secure, dependable, scaleable, time- and cost-efficient. 

This concludes my remarks. I would be happy to answer any 

questions you have. 

[The statement of Ms. Dillaman follows:] 


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Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. 

Ms. Farrell. 

STATEMENT OF BRENDA S. FARRELL 

Ms. FARRELL. Madam Chairwoman, with your permission, I 

would like to summarize my written statement. I promise you that 

my remarks won’t be as long as the written statement, but I think 

it will be a good segue into the conversation that you wish to have 

today. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. 

Ms. FARRELL. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to 

discuss the Federal Government’s personnel security clearance reform efforts. 

My remarks today are based on GAO’s numerous reports that 

give us a historical view of key factors that should be considered 

in clearance reform. 

Our reviews have identified delays and other impediments in 

DOD’s program, which maintains about 2.5 million clearances, including clearances necessary to carry out intelligence functions. 

These longstanding delays resulted in our adding the DOD personnel security clearance program to our high-risk list in January 

of 2005. 

In the past few years, several positive changes have been made 

to the clearance processes because of increased congressional oversight, recommendations from our body of work, and new legislative 

and executive requirements, most notably the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which many 

of you had a hand in passing. 

One important change is the formation of an interagency team, 

of which members of that team are present here today on the 

panel. The interagency team plans to deliver a transformed, modernized, fair and reciprocal security clearance process that is universally applicable to DOD, the Intelligence Community and other 

U.S. Government agencies. 

Two of the four key factors in my written statement essential to 

the interagency team achieving the goal of reciprocal security clearance process involve: one, incorporating quality-control steps; and 

two, establishing metrics for assessing all aspects of the process. 

First, government agencies have paid little attention to quality, 

despite GAO’s repeated suggestions to place more emphasis on it. 

For example, the government uses the percentage of investigative 

reports returned for insufficiency during the adjudicative phase as 

the primary metric for assessing quality. As you may know, GAO 

has identified this metric by itself as inadequate. 

Prior work examined a different aspect of quality: the completeness of documentation in investigative and adjudicative reports. We 

found that OPM provided incomplete investigative reports to DOD 

adjudicators, which the adjudicators then use to determine Top Secret eligibility. Almost all, 47 of 50, of the sampled investigative reports GAO reviewed were incomplete based on requirements in the 

Federal investigative standards. 

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dicative guidelines when adverse information was present in some 

of those reports. 

In addition, our October 2007 report documented the reluctance 

of some agencies, particularly the DHS and the FBI, to accept 

clearances issued by other agencies. To achieve greater reciprocity, 

clearance-granting agencies need to have confidence in the quality 

of the clearance process. 

The second key factor I wish to discuss is establishing metrics for 

assessing all aspects of the clearance processes. Many efforts to 

monitor clearance processes emphasize measuring timeliness, but 

additional metrics could provide a fuller picture of the clearance 

process. 

Similar emphasis on timeliness appears to be emerging for the 

future of governmentwide clearance process. In the DNI’s 500-Day 

Plan for Integration and Collaboration, the core initiative to modernize the security clearance process identified only one type of 

metric—processing times—about how success will be gauged. 

GAO reports have highlighted a variety of metrics that have 

been used to examine clearance programs, such as: one, completeness of investigative and adjudicative reports; two, staff and customers’ perceptions of the processes; and three, the adequacy of internal controls. Including these and other types of metrics could 

add value in monitoring clearance processes and provide better information to allow greater congressional oversight. 

In summary, the current interagency team to develop a new governmentwide security clearance system represents a positive step 

to address past impediments and manage security reform efforts. 

Still, as already noted by the panel members, much remains to be 

done. And GAO stands ready to assist the Congress. 

Thank you, and I am ready for questions when you are. 

[The statement of Ms. Farrell follows:] 


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Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you very much, to each one of you. 

Let me start this off with an observation. I think that some 

progress is being made. I am encouraged by what the President 

called for. I am encouraged with the work and some of the statistics that are offered. I mean, I did read all of the backup. 

And I would like to acknowledge all of our staff, both from the 

majority and the minority side of the committee, because, without 

them, we wouldn’t have what is presented to us and help set up 

the hearings. So I want to acknowledge their very fine work. They 

care about this, and they help carry us. 

Let me start out with what is the directive of the Congress, 

which is the IRTPA. We have—— 

Mr. ISSA. We could have done better on the acronym, couldn’t 

we? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Exactly. We could have, Darrell. We could 

have. 

At any rate, that legislation set forth requirements in the area 

of reciprocity, and I want to examine that. There were at least four 

requirements that were set down in that that all agencies—I think 

you know what they are, so I don’t have to repeat them. 

What we have learned from a roundtable that the subcommittee 

had is the FBI acknowledged, in the roundtable, that neither the 

FBI or DHS, they do not have a clearance reciprocity with other 

agencies 3 years after the enactment of the legislation. 

Do any of you want to comment on that? In the interagency 

team, has that been addressed? Has it been examined? Can you tell 

us more about that? 

Because I think that there is a shortcoming there; at least this 

is what they have told us. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Eric needs to talk about the Intelligence Community. 

And Kathy needs to correct me if I am wrong on this fact, but 

the clearest indication of there not being reciprocity is an agency 

requests a new investigation of somebody that already has an investigation for a clearance level at the level that they are going to 

have at the new agency. My understanding is that if somebody requests that OPM does an investigation and they already have a 

clearance for that level, Kathy does not do the investigation. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. So does that leave a gap? Are we where we 

need to be? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. No, I don’t believe we are where we need to be. 

But there are controls in place. Last year, I think, we rejected 

about 25,000 requests, where agencies came in and asked for unnecessary investigations. They were forced to not duplicate the 

process. Now, we conducted 800,000 clearance investigations last 

year. And so that is certainly one indicator. 

And I don’t believe that is just malicious, not accepting other 

agencies. Sometimes it is just not using the transparency we have 

made available into the clearance actions. One of the requirements 

of the act was that there be a national database of clearances so 

that there would be transparency. 

Now, OPM and the Department of Defense, together, have linked 

the master databases that provide for transparency into someone’s 

clearance. If you looked at my record, you would see that there is 


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a Top Secret clearance, sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management, based on an investigation that was conducted. That database is made accessible across government to all agencies. 

Now, it does not include the clearances in the Intelligence Community, by the very nature of those clearances in that data system. 

If we had tied those systems together, it would have made the 

whole system classified, and then it would not be usable to a broad 

section of the government. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Was it the Congress’ directive in the legislation that has produced this, or is it that we simply haven’t gotten 

to it? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. I think it is the practical understanding that, by 

and large—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. What does that mean? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. By and large, outside of the Intelligence Community, the need for transparency into the investigative and adjudicative history of an individual is outside of the classified arena. Within the Intelligence Community, that is maintained. 

And so, instead of one system, there are two: the system that is 

OPM and DOD tied together, which has 90 percent of the unclassified clearance information, and that inside the Intelligence Community, which I am sure Eric can discuss. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Let me say that I contend that reciprocity of security clearances exists. Are there exceptions? Sure. What does not 

exist is, to my knowledge—I believe this is true—is reciprocity of 

suitability clearance. 

You have had an investigation that deems you suitable for employment—forget security clearance—that deems you suitable for 

employment at the Interior Department. Now you are being considered for employment at the Treasury Department. Forget the clearance. Suitability, that is a separate process. 

And we did not, nor did IRTPA, charge this group—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Let’s call it the legislation. 

Mr. JOHNSON [continuing]. The legislation charges us to look at 

suitability. 

But everybody has agreed, which is why the task force now looks 

at aligning suitability issues of this sort with clearance issues of 

this sort. Because to reform one without the other leaves a broken 

system. 

But I generally will contend—and, again, if it is not a fair statement, let me know, let the committee know—that clearance reciprocity exists; suitability reciprocity does not. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. And why do you think that is the case? 

What contributes to that? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. I think suitability is a little different science, in 

that it considers the position that the individual is applying for. 

Let me give you an example. An individual may have a Top Secret clearance with an agency and, in their past, have a history of 

drug use, but considering the whole-person concept, it was not sufficient to deny a security clearance. At the same time, that person 

may not be suitable for all positions across government, especially 

if there is a nexus between drug use and the position, like a DEA 

agent would be. 


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There are other types of disqualifiers where the individual may 

get a clearance in one agency but not be suitable to work in another type of position. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Aren’t these all processes, though? Aren’t 

the results the same? And that is that it inhibits the movement of 

people, jobwise, obviously, suitability clearance? I mean, they are 

all connected. They are not, in my view—I mean, they are—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. But there are separate rules and statutes and so 

forth. So that is why the committee is looking at it. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Where are we—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Take Kathy’s example of somebody who is moving 

to an agency where drug use is an issue. It would be appropriate 

to dig deeper on the issue of their past drug usage, to look at 

whether they are suitable to work at DEA. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Don’t you think just common sense would 

dictate that that might be an issue, no matter where someone is? 

At what agency is it acceptable for someone to have a drug-use 

background? It doesn’t make sense to me. 

Mr. JOHNSON. If drug use was 30 years ago in college. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Timeliness. Okay. 

Mr. JOHNSON. What we want to make sure doesn’t happen is, if 

you want to dig deeper on one issue, you don’t begin the investigation all over again. You accept the investigative work, if it is current, done to date, and you add to it. 

And that is not the case in most of these situations or historically, where if you needed to look at something in greater detail, 

you looked at the whole thing all over again. And that is the absence of reciprocity. Reciprocity means look at additional things but 

accept what has already been done. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Madam Chair, can I jump in with one thing? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Certainly. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Within the IC, reciprocity works pretty well. It is 

the rules of the road, and it operates. 

The IC is served by one common database, as Kathy mentioned. 

It is a classified database, for good reasons. I think what we are 

talking about here, though, is that we need a database for the government. Reciprocity is not well-served by the existing architecture, 

the IT architecture. And we are working, in the Joint Team, to try 

to find some way to make that happen. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I appreciate your adding that, but one of 

my favorite subjects is technology. Obviously, my district is the 

driver of it. 

Mr. ISSA. Our State, you mean. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Our State. Thank you. Our district makes 

our State that much better, and our country. 

But the requirements of the legislation really set forward several 

areas. The evaluation is supposed to assess the application of technologies in at least five areas: granting interim clearances—you 

know what they are—expediting the initial security clearance processing, including the verification of information submitted by the 

applicant; ongoing verification of suitability—we have touched on 

that; the use of technologies to augment the periodic investigations; 

and assessing the impacts of the above, without going into the detail of it. 


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It is my understanding that only one area has been addressed, 

and that is expediting the initial security clearance process. And I 

would like you to comment on that. Is this incorrect? What are the 

timelines for the other four areas? 

I can’t help but think that there must be some frustration on the 

part of people representing the various parts of this system, because you are working hard to make up for, I shouldn’t say, the 

sins of the past, in order to revolutionize the system. 

But in oversight, we want to drill down on where there are still, 

you know, some shortfalls. And so I would ask you to comment on 

that. 

And then I am going to go to Mr. Issa for his questions. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I should have been listing the four items in particular. But when the full reform effort began in 2006—latter part 

of 2005, and began to see some impact in 2006—the priority was 

placed on initial investigations versus reinvestigations. And there, 

as a result, has been—it was capacity and accountability which 

was the primary focus. 

So, as a result of that, significant—significant—improvement had 

been made in the time it takes to investigate—first of all, at the 

beginning, the time it takes to get a request for an investigation 

from the person signing it to the investigative entity, the time it 

takes to investigate it, and the time it takes to adjudicate it. There 

have been significant improvements in adjudication timeliness, investigative timeliness, transmission of the original application 

timeliness. So the whole process has made significant strides. 

The other three areas were? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Well, one of them is granting interim clearances. I mean, that was one of the—that was supposed to come out 

of this. Ongoing verification of suitability of personnel with access 

to classified information. The use of technology to augment—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. The technology pieces that we have focused on 

have been an idea toward timeliness and given current technology—the deployment utilization of the technologies that exist 

today. So that has been e-QIP, as Kathy talked about. That has 

been transmission of files from the investigative unit to the adjudicated unit, which can cut weeks off of this process. 

The longer-term issues, like an entirely different architecture for 

the database, going paperless, all of the things that have huge potential are still before us. They are longer-term issues that require 

investment of funds; it is technology that does not exist today. 

Another form of technology application here has been getting access to digital records as opposed to paper records. Kathy has done 

a great job working with different industries and database record 

sources to be able to accomplish that. So there has been attention 

to that. 

I wouldn’t say that the community is frustrated over where it is; 

the community is quite proud of what has been accomplished. But 

the goals laid out by IRTPA, for all the right reasons, are very, 

very aggressive. And that is our goal. Our goal is to completely 

change this and take it to several-orders-of-magnitude-greater levels of performance, and that is what our focus is. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I think what was spelled out in the legislation is really needed. When one goes through and reads the GAO 


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reports that have been issued over quite a long period of time, it 

is a system that really needs overhaul. I am glad that we are taking some steps. I think we still have a ways to go. 

Let me acknowledge my friend and colleague, Mr. Issa. 

Mr. ISSA. From the telecom valley of the south. 

One of the challenges we face—you know, certainly, if we looked 

at industry and we said, ‘‘Would you do things the way we were 

doing them 3 years ago?’’, the answer—those truths were self-evident, that they had long ago given up the systems we were using. 

But let’s take a company; let’s take General Motors. Could you 

imagine if an executive in the Chevy division were transferred to 

the Cadillac division and they said, ‘‘Well, yeah, we know you took 

a polygraph’’—I am stretching this a little—‘‘a polygraph in the 

Chevy division, but we have our own people, and we are going to 

re-ask you the same questions in order to employ you in the Cadillac division.’’ Would that be considered to be one company? 

You know, Ambassador, on the base it of all, the fact that we 

still—or, Ms. Farrell, I know you have looked at this—the fact that 

we still repolygraph people when they move, looking at the same 

data, at a desk next to each other, but if they move from ownership 

of one agency to another, we repolygraph them, in some cases. 

Is there any basis under the intent of Congress to continue doing 

that? 

Mr. BOSWELL. If I can touch on that, first, I think that reciprocity within the Intelligence Community works rather well. And, 

second, I would like to get on the record that I don’t—— 

Mr. ISSA. Is this the part that you think works well, though? 

Mr. BOSWELL. Reciprocity of security clearances. 

We also have, obviously, a joint duty requirement, which has 

been instituted by the DNI, and all members of the Intelligence 

Community have agreed to accept the clearances of the originating 

agency when folks move from one position to a joint duty position. 

Polygraphs are not a particular impediment toward security 

clearances. They are not a big piece of the timeline. And—— 

Mr. ISSA. Ambassador, isn’t it true that we have a critical shortage of people to do polygraphs, that that, in fact, is one of the bottlenecks? I am trying to understand why it is not an impediment 

if we don’t have enough people to administer them. 

Mr. BOSWELL. It is not an impediment in terms of the amount 

of time in the process. Only a few of the intelligence agencies require polygraphs. We still leave it up to the individual agencies, 

and only five of them—I think it is five—require a polygraph. So 

it is really not a substantial impediment. 

Mr. ISSA. Okay. Maybe I am—yes, Ms. Farrell? 

Ms. FARRELL. If I could build on what my colleagues have said, 

OPM has the bulk of the investigations to do; it is about 90 percent—— 

Mr. ISSA. But you have all those Confidential and Secret clearances that, quite frankly, you know, they are pro forma almost; you 

know, see if the guy actually did get convicted of a felony when he 

said he didn’t. I mean, let’s go through the bulk and slim it down. 

We are here today primarily talking about our most sensitive access, and that is not 2 million last year. That is how many, Ms. 

Dillaman? 


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Ms. DILLAMAN. 90,000 to 100,000 for Top Secret clearances, and 

a like number for the reinvestigations that we do. 

Mr. ISSA. Right. Okay. But within your purview, 90,000 to 

100,000 at TS, and then, above that, a fraction of that 90,000 to 

100,000 that would be even more thorough. 

So we are talking about 90,000 to 100,000. I just want to make 

sure that we don’t keep looking at 2 million. You know, as a second 

lieutenant, I had to have a Secret clearance. Actually, as a private, 

I had to get that Secret clearance. Candidly, they didn’t know that 

much about me. 

Ms. FARRELL. Top Secret takes longer; it costs more. And perhaps sharing clearances among the Federal agencies is not an 

issue, but those that are associated with the Intel Community are 

an issue. 

But it appears to us that from—for example, I mentioned our October 2007 report, where we went in and looked at, I believe it was, 

54 fusion centers that are a mechanism for helping collaboration of 

information-sharing. It was through that work that it came to our 

attention that there was this reciprocity issue, especially with the 

DHS and the FBI, which you acknowledge you had discussions at 

your roundtable about, that they were unwilling to share other 

Federal agencies’ investigations. 

But my point being, OPM does the investigations for Top Secret 

for the vast majority. Perhaps there is not an issue of transfering 

clearances from the Agricultural Department to Commerce. There 

is this issue of suitability that Mr. Johnson was explaining, and 

there is some overlap with security clearances. There is some duplicative effort there that could be streamlined. I believe the joint 

working group is working toward that, which is a good thing. 

But then, within the IC community, you have this issue of reciprocity. Maybe amongst them there is not an issue of going from 

DIA to the CIA, but there is this issue of someone outside the community coming in with a clearance. We haven’t done work specifically looking at the Intelligence Community, but we have a little 

insight from the October 2007 work that I mentioned. 

Mr. ISSA. Okay. Well, I think I see a pattern that—I want to, 

sort of—I am going to bifurcate a little bit of the community versus 

all others, because it appears as though we are heading down that 

road. 

Mr. JOHNSON. What road? I am sorry. 

Mr. ISSA. The road of—basically, there is the IC community’s 

real, core clearances, and then there is all others. I mean, that is 

becoming pretty evident, that it is not about what level of clearance, it is about who gave you the clearance. I mean, I think even 

though you are disagreeing on this, you are agreeing in a sense. 

And let me just give you the example. ‘‘Factors used to determine 

eligibility for security clearances’’—this is saying it is a clearance: 

Allegiance to the United States, foreign influence, foreign preference, sexual behavior, personal conduct, financial considerations, 

alcohol consumption, drug involvement, psychological conditions, 

criminal conduct, handling protected information, outside activities—I guess that would be soccer and so on—and use of information technology systems. 

Stamp collecting, exactly. Clearly not a Californian. 


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Now, the question is, are these actually eligibility for security 

clearance, or do these get down that nonreciprocity side, that it is 

okay to give you a TS with a drug background, just not a TS for 

DEA? Is that what we are really talking about? Even though they 

are printed on a document that actually gets attached when somebody gets rejected, that, in fact, we are mixing the two. 

Does Congress need to understand clearly the difference between 

you can see the information and you can have access to where you 

might be able to generate or pass on differently? Is that what we 

are talking about here? Because I would like to understand that in 

addition to the two communities, if you will, of clearances. 

Ms. Farrell. 

Ms. FARRELL. Those guidelines I believe you were citing is what 

the adjudicator looks at to determine the eligibility. And, again, I 

think the issue here is who is doing the investigation and the quality of the investigation, which has Federal guidelines that the investigators should adhere to in terms of conducting the investigation—you know, doing the background check, the financial check, 

their social check, employment, education. They put the package 

together, and then those other guidelines you referred to are used 

by the agency or the adjudicator to determine that person’s eligibility for that Top Secret clearance. 

Mr. ISSA. But it is not for the Top Secret clearance, as it turns 

out. Some of this is for do you get the job or not. You have been 

offered a job, in this case, at the CIA. But when they go through 

this, the truth is, if you were working for DOD, you might get your 

Top Secret, but you are not going to get it for the CIA, because, 

in the case of the rejection here—it was cited by Elizabeth York, 

so I am assuming this is completely unclassified, since it was sent 

through ordinary mail with no designation at a center in Maryland. 

‘‘During your security testing session, October 2005 to January 

2006, you noted on two occasions that you had direct contact with 

officials of foreign government, including two non-U.S. ambassadors and a foreign minister.’’ This is part of the fact that this 

person is being told they can’t do it. 

Now, the fact that this person was an employee of the Department of Energy in an unclassified environment, that this person, 

in fact, is multilingual and an Oxford graduate—by the way, they 

also note her attendance at Oxford as a period of time outside the 

country in her rejection. 

When we are looking at a system that—Ms. Dillaman, you are 

doing a great job of making it digital—when we are looking at a 

system in which somebody applies and it turns out that exactly 

when the DNI is basically being confirmed, in December of 2005, 

as we are saying we want to bring in Arabs and Muslims, we add 

a directive, which the language of the directive is cited right here, 

that actually says that foreign contact is going to be a limiting factor in getting it—it should be a consideration for a limiting factor. 

So if you have family and friends overseas, you are not going to 

get the clearance, while we tell people, Arabs and Muslims, that already speak the language, we want them. You don’t speak the language fluently without contacts in the community that, if you don’t 

have contacts over there, they are going to have contacts. 


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So before we go on to some of the wonderful work being done 

digitizing stuff, how do we get past this impasse when, in fact, we 

are taking Oxford grads, law students who happen to be fluent in 

Arabic and Spanish and, oh, by the way, can talk to a foreign minister in their native tongue at a 3/3 level, how do we reject these 

people and cite that they had those very contacts overtly? 

Yes, Ms. Farrell? 

Ms. FARRELL. I hope that the reform committee is looking at 

that, because you keep talking about GAO’s reports going back 

years. I know that they went back at least until 1974, before I 

started at GAO. 

Mr. ISSA. Before you graduated high school, for goodness’ sake. 

Ms. FARRELL. That is in my background investigation. 

But we have had these issues of quality and incompleteness in 

1999, 2001, 2006, and we are getting ready to go in and look again 

and see what it is. We have talked about the need for a massive 

overhaul of this system, which is what the reform committee is trying to do. 

We would hope to see, in their revised plan, one of the issues 

that you are bringing up: Are they going to look at the policies and 

update them or amend some, eliminate them, in order to bring 

them up and into, quite frankly, the 21st century so that it can 

take into account individuals that would be acceptable today that 

wouldn’t have been acceptable perhaps during the Cold War? 

Mr. ISSA. Yeah. I guess, great question. Are you? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Am I what? Sorry. 

Mr. ISSA. Are you going to look at these factors? Are you going 

to make these differences a part of the restructuring? Or are we 

gong to rely on a directive that came out of 2005, where we say 

we want to recruit and then, by the way, we are making it almost 

impossible to succeed. We get the applications and then we reject 

them at a high level. 

Yes, Mr. Ambassador? 

Mr. BOSWELL. As you noted in your opening statement, Mr. Issa, 

the DNI has made it a priority to facilitate bringing heritage Americans—— 

Mr. ISSA. A priority publicly, and a directive that makes it much 

more difficult privately. 

Mr. BOSWELL. We had a tough time during the DNI’s Senate confirmation hearing, because one member of the panel brought up an 

example of a job application within the IC that basically said, if 

you have a foreign-born parent or immediate family member, don’t 

even bother to apply. That was an error, of course. It has never 

been the standard that it prohibits employment in the Intelligence 

Community. 

But what is changing—and it is not final yet—but what is changing is that, in the past, having an immediate family member that 

was a heritage American, to bring that person on board required 

a waiver. And the mere existence of that requirement discouraged 

people from applying. The DNI is going to change that policy—it 

is in the final stages of interagency coordination—to eliminate that 

waiver requirement. The standard will remain tests of loyalty to 

the United States, but the waiver requirement will be gone. 


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Mr. ISSA. Okay. Because we want to alternate here, I would appreciate if, actually in a classified response, we could get, item by 

item, changes that you are going to make so that we have a better 

understanding. Because the committee, at least the Chairwoman 

and myself, both have substantial foreign contacts and/or—well, we 

meet with foreign heads of state all the time when we travel. But 

also, we both have family and influence that go directly back, oddly 

enough, both to the Middle East. 

So, you know, it is a deep concern that we are the people who 

are trying to make sure America is safe, while in fact we are going 

to take people just as loyal as the Chairwoman or myself and potentially exclude them. We don’t have that luxury. There just aren’t 

enough people who understand or have the ability to get a 

jumpstart on our Middle East needs. And that is our biggest problem, is the pool is pretty small to then cut off, as you said, arbitrarily. 

One last question, and then I am very much have used all my 

time. The differences between—and we will just use the CIA as an 

umbrella for an agency or the NSA and all other clearances, I am 

detecting a lot. 

Let me ask you a real question, because we talked about the two 

databases—one that is broad but not deep, one that is deep but not 

available. When we did our reform, should we potentially have said 

that there are two tiers of this reform, one tier for the vast majority and one tier for the most sensitive, and that, in fact, each had 

to have harmony? 

And I noted, Ms. Farrell, you said 47 percent of DOD applications were incomplete but approved. 

Ms. FARRELL. 47 out of 50 cases. 

Mr. ISSA. Oh, 47 out of 50, so twice the percentage. 

Well, the CIA often rejects because you didn’t give them one fact 

of one foreign contact, even though you gave them half a dozen or 

a dozen. You just missed one. So the standards are so different in 

who gets the job. 

I will ask each of you—and you can respond here and further, 

obviously, behind closed doors—did we err and should we, in fact, 

be looking at two levels of sensitivity, so that the vast majority of 

clearances, including Top Secret, are done? And then, if you will, 

we will call it the compartmented mentality, that the next level is 

a matter of DEA, NSA, CIA and others saying, okay, for sensitive 

beyond, let’s say, base TS, we are going to have another umbrella 

of harmonization. 

I don’t have a problem with there being two databases. I have 

a problem that if I have the need to know, those two databases 

aren’t equally accessible. I have a problem not with TSs not being 

equally run around. I have a problem that at a given level it is not 

clear that they can move around. And I have no problem at all, as 

a second lieutenant with a Secret clearance, being told it only goes 

so far. But, at some point, our most sensitive information being 

available to somebody, we need to have that. 

Can you respond to that? I know it is a broad question, but it 

goes to the core of do we need to take further action? 

Ms. FARRELL. Well, I think—— 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you for your courage. 


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Mr. JOHNSON. We are all for further action. I am not sure I understand the question. 

Mr. ISSA. Well, it doesn’t appear as though you are going to get 

to, if you will, a one-paper process at the most sensitive level unless we segregate it from the vast majority of others. It looks like 

Ms. Dillaman has high confidence—Ms. Farrell, you seem to have 

high confidence—that we can get 1.8 million approvals done, and 

most of those will have great reciprocity, great capability. It just 

isn’t going to work at the agency or at the CIA, it is not going to 

work at the NSA, it is not going to work at the NSC. 

I mean, I think—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Ambassador Boswell said it is working. I don’t understand—you pointed to one example that, by the way, is over 2 

years old, if I understood the dates correctly, before Mike McConnell was put in as the DNI and has adopted these policies and initiated these reforms. 

Mr. ISSA. That was the start. The end is much more current. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay, well, I misunderstood. But I think Eric said 

that there is reciprocity with the intelligence community. 

Mr. ISSA. So I can get a clearance at the TS level, X, Y, Z, that 

goes through, let’s say, for DOD. And I get up from DOD as somebody working in the Deputy Assistant Secretary’s Office for 

‘‘Blank,’’ and I can be on the Pak-Afghan border the next day and 

have no problem being read in to the most sensitive counterintelligence if that is the same level? No. We don’t have that ability. So, 

you know—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. For all the right reasons. 

Mr. BOSWELL. But, sir, I think what you are getting at is the 

question that the Chairwoman also mentioned, which is that the 

existence of a database and the ability to move information across 

from one agency to another. 

And the problem, of course, as Kathy Dillaman mentioned as 

well, that one database is classified and the rest are not. Well, we 

are looking for—the intention is a unitary system to address exactly the questions that you raised. That is the intention of the 

Joint Team, and we hope to get there. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Let me make one comment about—— 

Mr. ISSA. You seem to have a different opinion, and I am going 

to ask you to make the last—and then yield back my time. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. You don’t have any time to yield back. 

Mr. ISSA. I know I don’t. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. If I may? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. But I appreciate—I want this to be freeflowing, because there is a lot of questioning. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. There is a very broad base of need across government, some classified, some unclassified. There is absolutely no restriction on the classified world having access to our information; 

it is only the reverse. 

And so, for that population that stays outside of that classified 

arena and moves around, the system supports it well. For the classified world, who needs to draw from the unclassified, that system 

will support it well. And for the limited number that may move out 

of the Intelligence Community into the nonclassified world, there 


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is a delayed process. But I believe, even then, with the informationsharing progress we are making, that will not be excessive. 

And so we have cut down the risk of individuals being stalled in 

that fluid movement around government significantly, not to the 

ideal state you just described, but certainly to the point where 

every possible user in government has access and isn’t hampered 

because they themselves aren’t working inside the classified world. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Issa, can I make one quick point—— 

Mr. ISSA. Talk to the Chair. 

Mr. JOHNSON [continuing]. That addresses this issue? 

If you move from, like, an under secretary at DOD to, all of the 

sudden, now you are in Pakistan or Iraq or something, doing intelligence work—I spent a couple, 3 hours with John out at NSA. And 

this gets to the issue of what this community is trying to do, which 

is move from risk aversion to risk management, which is a general 

concept we talk about, where we have somebody who is Iraqi or 

Pakistani, and if they are working on something over here that is 

domestic, high-level, very top-secret, whatever, their being Pakistani or Iraqi may not be an issue. But, all of a sudden, if they are 

working at NSA on Iraqi or Pakistani issues, they may be listening 

to conversations by relatives of theirs. 

So there is a security management issue there that has to be addressed. And what NSA is doing, for instance, is you manage the 

risk; you don’t say, yes, you can do this, no, you don’t. What is the 

risk, and how can we manage it? So, for instance, maybe you put 

them in a separate facility, or maybe you put them here, or maybe 

you put some controls, or maybe you do some extra quality control. 

In general, now, we are talking about more emphasis on reinvestigations, be it Secret or Top Secret, throughout this whole process, 

what changes the overall approach to this, risk management versus 

risk aversion. The original security clearance thing, which is 50- 

plus years old, is a risk-aversion process. We want all to go, I 

think, by and large, to a risk-management process. 

Risk management gets us into—and this is the NSA example— 

into being able to hire the foreign speakers. So even though there 

are significant risks, you don’t say, ‘‘Ooh, there is a little risk.’’ No, 

there is some little risk, let’s find out a way to manage it, because 

this person wants to do a good job, we need to have that job, we 

need their language skills, let’s do it. There is a really strong commitment within the IC to do that. 

It was something that was irrelevant. It was an irrelevant issue 

5 or 10 years ago. It is highly relevant now. And my impression 

is and firsthand knowledge of it, albeit sparse, is they are doing a 

very aggressive, good job of managing those risks, not saying no to 

all those people with foreign relatives. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. All right. I would like to thank you, Mr. 

Issa. Good line of questioning. 

Mr. Holt. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for holding these 

hearings. 

I thank the witnesses for coming. 

Let me pursue two lines of questioning. And forgive me, I was 

out of the room for part of the time. I may have missed this. But 


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it wouldn’t hurt to summarize it for me and for the record, if you 

have already talked about this. 

Maybe this goes particularly to Ms. Dillaman, but to anyone: 

What is the limit? Okay, so we have cut the time down to maybe 

a few months for Secret and Top Secret. Doing it the way we are 

doing it, and digitizing it as necessary, asking the questions we are 

asking, collecting the information we are collecting, what is the 

limit? What will be the shortest time for a TS? What will be the 

shortest time for an S, a Secret? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Sir, the process relies on the voluntary cooperation of tens of thousands of different sources of information—the 

public. 

Mr. HOLT. So that means you have good data, you have good statistics. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. We do, yes. 

Mr. HOLT. So using those good statistics, what will it be? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. It can be as little, for some individuals, as 15 

days. It can be as long, for some individuals, as 15 months. 

Mr. HOLT. Because you have good statistics—because there are 

thousands and thousands and thousands of these that you are 

doing, you can get very good statistics. So what will the median be, 

the median time? Half the people will take longer than that, half 

the people will take shorter than that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. In what time frame? I mean, when? A year from 

now? Five years from now? 

Mr. HOLT. If you can do everything you want to do, digitize it 

and so forth, what is the best we will achieve on a steady-state 

basis? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Today, we are at 80 percent, averaging in the low 

60 days. But the Top Secrets take longer because of the information we are collecting. 

I believe that if there are not significant reforms in the way information is shared around government, we can make some more 

improvements. But all improvements related to just having enough 

people to do the job we have realized. We have enough people—— 

Mr. HOLT. So by so-called streamlining, you think that we are 

approaching the asymptote here, to speak mathematically. In other 

words, you just won’t reduce the median time much more. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. I think there are still some—— 

Mr. HOLT. By digital fingerprints and using the Internet and, everything we can do? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. I think there are additional improvements, but it 

is going to rely on other systems outside of our immediate control 

to also have reform brought to them. 

Let me give you an example, sir. Every investigation requires 

that I obtain the FBI’s records. And if the FBI is incapable of providing all of their records timely—and they provide most of their 

records timely, but not all—then those investigations where I can 

have all of the rest of the work done but I need to wait for the FBI 

to provide their essential information won’t be completed until that 

final piece. For an individual, if I need to do a subject interview 

to resolve issues and that individual is deployed to a war zone, I 

have to wait until I have access to that individual. So there are factors that can delay specific investigations. 


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But on the flip side of that, out of the 580,000 that we did, 

145,000 of them were done in less than 45 days; some of them in 

less than 30 days. 

Mr. HOLT. What I would ask is, did you actually look at the median, that is a meaningful number, half to longer, half toward 

shorter, and find out what that is? And if it means going to the FBI 

and asking how much more can they shorten their process. 

The median: Now some will take longer and some will take 

shorter, but the median. Have they reached their limit? Have they 

come to the asymptote? And there is not going to be much improvement. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. That is what we have been doing over the last 

2 years is working with every one of these. There are 26,000 local 

law enforcement agencies that I rely on, 50 State records systems, 

dozens of Federal records systems, and every one of those has to 

be fine-tuned to be responsive. 

And I also need to get the cooperation and responsiveness of the 

citizens that have to be interviewed. I can’t just demand that they 

shut down and stop and talk to me. I work around their schedules 

as well. 

So you are right, there is a limit for how far we can cut the time 

on this to the point where we have been so aggressive that we cut 

off the very information that is essential to us. And it is finding 

that delicate balance. 

There is more to be gotten out of this. There are further improvements. And if today is 63 days, whether that improvement is down 

to 40 days or 38 days is yet to be determined. It depends on just 

how much reform we can bring. 

Mr. HOLT. How will that be determined? It is a question we need 

to ask and that we really need an answer to. 

We shouldn’t be flogging people in the government to be getting 

it down to 20 days when the best we are ever going to do is 40 

days. So if OPM can’t go to the FBI and get that information for 

what is the best for FBI—maybe we need the DNI to go to the FBI 

and get—if one of your necessary ingredients is this FBI check, and 

it currently takes 71 days, or whatever it is, for Top Secret, you 

need to know and we need to know what is the best they can do. 

Mr. JOHNSON. If we—this is grossly overgeneralized but if we 

wanted to digitize every FBI record, we could get access to every 

FBI fact about somebody in seconds, a day. I bet we would decide 

we don’t want to do that. The cost of doing that, the time, the— 

I am not sure we would want to do that. I mean, so that is not likely to happen, but an example of what could happen that would take 

something that takes 30 days and now to get it down to seconds. 

The reform effort, there is a transformation effort under way, led 

by Defense Department, the ODNI and OPM, looking at all the 

things we can do to transform the system, not small incremental 

changes, but all the kinds of issues that have been addressed; and 

they have been charged by the President to start coming forward, 

starting on April 30, with what do they know now we should be 

adopting to transform the system. 

And then as soon as they have other recommendations they want 

to make that can be validated as being worthwhile and worth cost, 

being a good relationship to benefit, they come forward as quickly 


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after April 30 as they have something they want to recommend to 

the President. 

This is being done on a very aggressive time frame to look at, 

how quickly can this be done? Not ideally, but what should this 

system, this desired different way of doing this, what should it look 

like? And what is the implementation plan? 

And some of these things we can do in months or a year or so, 

and they can start having an impact. And some of them, like going 

totally paperless, will take more money and some more time, or 

significantly more time. It is not going to be done in months, it is 

going to be done in years to do it. But we are in the process. 

There is a formal effort to address all the things that can be 

done, and as a part of that, try to quantify the impact it will have 

on the process. So you add up all the impacts, and that is how 

quickly might it be done. 

Mr. HOLT. And who is responsible for quantifying that? Where is 

that being done? 

Mr. JOHNSON. The reform team, which is led by John Fitzpatrick 

and Beth McGrath here, that is answerable to the champions, 

which is DOD, ODNI, and OPM with a little orchestration from 

me. 

When they recommend something, it is, Here is what is suggested to us. 

Why is it valid? 

It is a worthwhile change to recommend to you, Mr. President; 

and here’s the benefit and here’s the cost of doing it. 

So that team, as a part of their evaluation, will come forward 

with their assessments. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Can I add to that, sir? 

Clay referred to the deadline of April 30. The reform team will 

have an acquisition strategy developed by April to be folded into it. 

The acquisition strategy will determine the cost and the implementation time lines the best we can. And we will also look for lowhanging fruit, near-term improvements as well as the long-term 

improvements. 

Mr. HOLT. I would urge, plead, whatever, that we make it quantitative. When you have got this many people, you have good data, 

or you should have good data. You can get good data. 

Mr. JOHNSON. We have got fantastic data. 

Mr. HOLT. And, therefore, it really should be quantitative, and 

you should know from an engineering operations point of view 

what the critical path is, what are the limiting time periods; if 

changes were made in those critical limiters, what would then become the limiting time period, and what is the median time there 

and how much can that median be shortened. 

You should be able to quantify it. I hope that is what you are 

doing. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Sir, if I may, because I live and breathe data, 

with the amount of work that we do, we track this down to a 

source level. And we have, since the clearance reform team was 

formed under OMB, we have provided full transparency to how 

long every aspect of an—not only how long they take, but how effective they are, how many times they net out the results that have 

to be considered. 


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Two short years ago, the average time for a Top Secret clearance 

was in excess of a year; the average time for a Secret Confidential 

was in excess of 6 months. And bringing the change to this and reform to this and watching it week in and week out incrementally 

go down, while the inventory of pending investigations dropped, 

meant we have to stay on top of data. 

Mr. HOLT. But, of course, you get smaller and smaller marginal 

returns with more and more investment of money. And at some 

point it is going to level off at an asymptote. We need to know what 

that is, and for each of the ingredients as well as the total process. 

Now let me turn to the bigger question, which is the more important question. We may be streamlining a fallacious process. Again, 

when I have asked this question to people before, I have not been 

satisfied with the answer, and I would like to push it a little bit 

more. 

How do we know that we are asking the right questions, that we 

are making the right determinations, that the process has any legitimacy? I must say I get on to this line of questioning because 

I have been convinced for many years that polygraphs, for example, 

are pseudoscience, bogus, just bogus; and yet, I know various agencies rely on it. Yes, you can use it to scare the daylights out of people, and maybe they will come forward with something. That is not 

science. But it makes me question whether the process is what it 

should be. 

So who is asking the questions? 

In fact, GAO said we need better metrics and, in fact, in GAO’s 

words, we need better measures of clearance quality, which I take 

to mean, we are asking not just what are internal quality controls, 

but we are also asking, have we cleared—have we rejected the people who should be rejected, and have we cleared the people who 

should be cleared? Have we avoided false positives? Have we avoided false negatives? How are we determining that? 

And we know there have been some false positives. They go by 

the names of Ames, and you know the list, and maybe there are 

a lot of others we don’t know. And I happen to know some false 

negatives, constituents and others who have been rejected, I am 

pretty convinced, unfairly, unreasonably, illogically, or fallaciously. 

So however we streamline the process, I hope somebody is asking 

how we quantify, whether we are doing the right thing. 

Ms. Farrell, since GAO addressed this, maybe I should start with 

you. 

Ms. FARRELL. Thank you for bringing that up, because our concern is the quality of the investigations. The numbers are going in 

the right direction for timeliness, and the agencies should be commended for that; OMB should be commended for their commitment 

and their strong leadership. 

As I noted earlier, everyone here wants to make it better, but our 

concern is that we may have a product that has a quick turnaround 

but is of poor quality. And it does no good to do something better 

and still end up with a product that doesn’t meet the standards 

that you want. 

Our concern is that we haven’t seen metrics, and we haven’t seen 

quality built into the investigations and the adjudication process. 


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The one metric that has been cited, that of returning investigations—that is one of six phases of this process, just one aspect of 

six phases—so there are more metrics that could be built into not 

only the investigative phase, but the appeals process, the application, all six phases. 

Mr. HOLT. Who should be responsible for building those in? 

Where should it rest? Should it be this general group? Should it be 

the DNI or the Secretary of Defense themselves? How can we be 

sure this is going to be done or is being done now? 

Ms. FARRELL. You have a number of things going on simultaneously. So the answer right now is, multiple players should be 

doing this. 

Mr. HOLT. And is that bad? I mean, part of the security clearance 

that we see is more uniformity, more consolidation. That may or 

may not be good. 

Should this be question about whether the process is even right, 

whether it is fallacious or not, should that also be centralized, or 

should that be decentralized? 

Ms. FARRELL. Right now, we have multiple processes, and we are 

trying to move to a process that would have a common framework 

that we share. The issue is, in the long term, will it be shared by 

not only the OPM investigators, but those that are doing investigations for the IC community as well. Right now, we hope that OPM 

has taken action on some of our recommendations to build in quality control measures for the situation that is today. 

We also hope that the reform committee will be looking ahead. 

And, as part of their strategic thinking—again, it is going back to, 

if you are going to overhaul a system that has been in place for 

decades, you probably need new policies and new procedures; and 

this is an opportunity to make sure that quality is built in to all 

the phases of that uniform process. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you. Mr. Johnson seems eager to speak. We 

have a vote on the floor. I am delighted to see the Chair is back. 

Mr. JOHNSON. While you are here, let me make a very strong 

statement. 

We do not have a quality—a security clearance quality problem 

in the Federal Government. 

Mr. HOLT. How do we know? 

Mr. JOHNSON. No bill has been passed. There has been no evidence that we are issuing—— 

Mr. HOLT. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I appreciate your conversations here and statements about the math of all this, but let me address something 

here. 

The issue, the primary issue—by far, the primary issue—is not 

that we are giving clearances to people that shouldn’t have them 

or that we are occasionally depriving the people that should get 

them. There are appeals processes that people are allowed to go 

through if they believe they are unjustly denied clearance. 

We have—what we have here and what the IRTPA attempted to 

challenge the Federal Government, and I believe we are rising to 

that challenge—is a timeliness issue, far and away, orders of magnitude, that difference. That is the issue. 


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On the issue of what is central and what is decentralized, we are 

centralizing, we have centralized the investigative matter. The adjudication is decentralized now. It is by agency. The responsibility 

for deciding who should get a clearance and who should come to 

work at an agency needs to be that agency’s responsibility, because 

each one of their missions is different and they need to look at 

what are the specifics. 

So there is not centralized adjudication, there is decentralized 

adjudication. There needs to be consistency of training and expertise and so forth, but how they weigh the factors should be, and 

is, agency-specific. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you. Let me try to pick up where we 

left off when I had to go over to the Capitol to vote. 

It seems to me that—in a nutshell, that the IC community is 

dealing with reciprocity and that the rest of the system is dealing 

with timeliness. 

Do you agree with that, or is that too—is that too much shorthand? 

Mr. BOSWELL. The IC has a timeliness issue, too. We are in pretty good shape in terms of the 2006 timelines. But we are not in 

good shape in terms of the 2009 timelines, and that is why we need 

a transformed system. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I think that Mr. Issa’s line of questioning 

was helpful. And I can’t help but think of the word ‘‘jointness’’ in 

all of this, because the legislation that the Congress put forward 

really was, I think, at the heart of it. And there are many manifestations of that, is that—that is our goal, is jointness. 

I understand that the needs of the Intelligence Community vary 

and differ in some ways—not in all ways, but in some ways—from 

the rest of the system. And, as he said, maybe there should be two 

different systems. I don’t know; I think that we still have to probe 

on that. But I think that there are many parts of this in terms of 

security clearance that are shared across the government. 

So how we achieve the jointness that the Congress directed, I 

guess is the question, and how we measure that. And I know Ms. 

Farrell in her testimony—and then your summary, you talked 

about metrics. So I want to examine the issue of metrics. 

But first, let me ask you, Ms. Dillaman, does OPM conduct any 

clearances for the Intelligence Community contractors? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Only those that would be considered under the 

Department of Defense. Yes. So we do all of the work for Department of Defense and for industry. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. You do? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Do you provide any assistance to contractors of prospective employees to navigate the clearance process? Or 

is that something that those that are seeking them are on their 

own to do? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. That belongs to the clearance granting agency 

themselves, in this case, Department of Defense. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. They do? 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Yes, ma’am. And the initial application process is 

an OPM-developed application process. So all of the online collecVerDate Aug 31 2005 06:56 Apr 30, 2008 Jkt 041733 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A733.XXX A733

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tion of information, and all the assistance, and tools that go with 

that, was developed by my agency. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Now, let me get to Ms. Farrell and the 

whole issue of metrics. 

What, in your work and how your work has instructed you, 

should the DNI use to validate the entire team’s results? 

Ms. FARRELL. I am going to go back to quality because—although 

I mentioned four factors in the statement—requirements, quality, 

quality measures, and long-term funding costs—because you are 

going to need money and people to carry out the reforms, but we 

would hope that quality would be built in to the process. 

Timeliness is an issue. We have heard that not only is it an issue 

with the DOD agencies, but it is an issue, as well, in the Intelligence Community. 

But the quality metrics that we would be looking for would be 

the completeness of the investigations and the adjudication reports, 

or the training. And that has come up, that these adjudicators are 

working for the multiple agencies that have multiple processes carrying out the eligibility function. So one metric would be looking 

at the number of training hours, the course content. Is it meeting 

the needs of that training community, especially for a new system 

that is being put in place? Other metrics could include surveys of 

the affected people, the adjudicators and the investigators, how 

well they think the process is working, as well as building in other 

internal controls for fraud, waste, and abuse, making sure that 

there is independence in the system to oversee and that there is 

no harm done. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Do you agree with that description? And to 

the extent that these are the observations of the GAO, are they 

built into your work? 

Mr. BOSWELL. I think an end-to-end enterprise system will have 

a much better way to measure the kinds of things that GAO—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Do you agree with the specifics of the 

metrics? 

Mr. BOSWELL. I agree with what Mr. Johnson said, which is that 

the issue at hand here is less the quality—we are confident in the 

security clearances that we are providing. We are confident in the 

quality of that system. 

What we are working on is the timeliness of the system. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. So do you agree or disagree with what Ms. 

Farrell said about these metrics? 

I mean, if you disagree, it is all right. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I disagree. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Tell us why. 

Mr. JOHNSON. The majority of the metrics she talks about are 

input metrics. And if you are implementing something, we look at 

training, we look at what the industry thinks of—we poll the industry on a regular basis, frequent, ongoing basis on how—they are a 

customer—how they view the process, the timeliness, quality, customer service, and so forth. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. We have done that in roundtable meetings, 

and they are not very pleased. 


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Mr. JOHNSON. They are not. And that is the point. Their understanding, their perception is different than the reality in terms of 

timeliness; and so we need to make sure it tells us—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. What does that mean, ‘‘their perception is 

different’’ than yours? 

Mr. JOHNSON. They say that—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Their experience is not the way they describe, the experience is not accurate? 

Mr. JOHNSON. It is what they feel. I mean, it is—their impression 

of the information is that times are not improving as our statistics 

suggest they are. And so that says we need to do a better job of 

working with them and getting statistics and getting a common understanding of what is going on here and what the opportunities 

are and what the obstacles are and so forth. 

So that is not something to dispose of or pay no attention to what 

they think. It is, we need to do a better job of linking up with industry, an even better job. And it is the agency’s responsibility, in 

this case, with industry, DOD. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I am not so sure I understand why you disagree with what Ms. Farrell said. Let me get back to that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. She talked about paying attention to training. Of 

course, we pay attention to training. And a part of this will be— 

and one of the things we started working on in 2006 was the adjudication, what consistencies and inconsistencies there are, the adjudicators, adjudicating activity across agencies, and what is the level 

of training and what level a person is that does the work and so 

forth. And there has been an ongoing effort to look at that and 

bring that all to be more consistent, more aligned across the agencies so there can be greater confidence in the quality of the adjudications done by all the different agencies. 

That is ongoing. But that is an input; you can do all that and 

still have bad adjudications. But nobody feels, nobody has said yet 

that we are granting clearances to people that shouldn’t have them. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Let me just go to Ms. Farrell. 

Is that what you intended as you came up with the metric, that 

there are people that are getting, receiving security clearances that 

shouldn’t? 

Ms. FARRELL. We don’t know. I think the answer to that is, you 

don’t know. Because the last time we went in and looked at the 50 

top secret cases, 47 of them had incomplete information that were 

related to residence, employment, education. And I am not talking 

about missing ZIP Codes. 

For example, talk social references. There is a requirement that 

the investigator interview two colleagues of the applicant that the 

colleague has provided, and then the investigator is to develop two 

social references. We found cases where the investigator only relied 

upon the information provided by the applicant. 

That is what we are talking about with ‘‘missing and incomplete.’’ Also, 27 of the 50 cases had unresolved issues that hadn’t 

been followed up. So my response to that is, we don’t know. They 

don’t know because of missing information. 

It is alarming when you look at the numbers in terms of incomplete investigations. The focus has been on timeliness—and that 

should be commended, the progress that has been made; again, the 


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numbers are going in the right direction. But we don’t want to do 

a product quicker and have a poor-quality product. 

Mr. JOHNSON. The commitment in everything—we want to go 

quicker with no diminution in quality. So there is no effort, there 

is no inattention to quality here. 

But with reference to employees that have gone bad, and Director McConnell talks about there are 128-or-something spy cases in 

the last whatever period of time. I think all of them, if I am not 

misunderstanding it, went bad after they got here, and 124 of 

them—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. That is a whole other area. 

Mr. JOHNSON. That gets into the risk management and the continuous reinvestigation. 

The suggestion was, because of the 128 people, that suggests that 

we are missing some people as they came in. They were—there was 

not risk when they were brought in. It is a risk management, it 

is management of risk and attention to—greater attention to their 

behavior after they are here. 

I do not believe that there is evidence that we have a quality 

issue that we need to categorically address. We are firmly committed to quality of investigations, quality of—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I don’t think there is lack of commitment 

in this. I think that you all are struggling to turn, the equivalent 

to me of a trying to make a huge cruise ship—trying to make a Uturn in a small bay. 

This is—we are dealing with a system that is very old and was 

set up to produce different outcomes at a different time. And I 

think it, you know, is characteristic of so many other efforts since— 

most frankly, since our country was attacked. 

And so I don’t think that is—I don’t doubt commitment from any 

of you. I think that you are all superbly committed. It is a matter 

of drilling down and seeing if, in fact, the directives of the legislation have been met; where there are shortcomings, that we work 

harder to correct them. 

I know, Ms. Dillaman, you wanted to say something. 

Ms. DILLAMAN. Thank you, ma’am. And with all due respect to 

my colleague from GAO, I also think we need to put this in context. 

When GAO looked at investigations, they looked at investigations 

conducted during the period of time when the Department of Defense investigations program was transferred to OPM—investigations, in fact, that were reviewed, started under DOD’s leadership. 

Now, that is not pointing fingers. That is to say that the two 

agencies had different standards applied to how investigations 

were conducted. One of the major benefits of combining the programs was uniformity, and we immediately did launch a massive 

training effort to get everybody, contractors and Federal employees 

alike, working toward the same standards; revised a standard, one 

standard handbook. And so the outcome of that merger effort is a 

more uniform program where the investigative standards are implied. 

There is work that needs to be done on the investigative standards, too, because when they were first drafted, it was almost a 

like a punch list. You would talk to two neighbors. Whether two 

neighbors were to know this individual or not, you had to talk to 


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two neighbors. And in today’s transient world, there are people 

whose neighbors know nothing about them, and they may not be 

the right source to testify to someone’s character. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. We have already covered that ground in the 

subcommittee, and there have been references made by other members, by members of the full committee as well. 

On this issue of quality, I think it would be helpful if there were 

objective measures to prove that there is quality; and that is not 

picking on an agency or to say that the things that you are working 

on are not important. But it is very important to have yardsticks 

by which we measure these things. 

I think that every single one of us is for quality. Nobody is going 

to doubt that or question that; and I am not going to question that 

with any of you. It would increase confidence, I think, here if in 

fact there were—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. I don’t think asking what investigators think of 

the process is an important quality measure. One of the metrics opposed by GAO is to ask on an ongoing basis what the investigators 

or adjudicators think of the process. I don’t believe that is a good 

quality measure. 

Mr. ISSA. Why? Why wouldn’t you think that was important? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Because I don’t think what their impressions are 

of the system have anything to do with whether it is a quality 

product. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Well, you just talked about impressions of 

the contractor community. Why are impressions from one community okay and from another part of the community are not? I sense 

that there are some tensions between what GAO’s recommendations—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. I am not a big fan of GAO using 2-year-old data 

to talk about the absence of quality in the process. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Do you sit down and talk to each other? 

Mr. JOHNSON. All the time. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. And you can’t get this worked out? 

Mr. JOHNSON. I have communicated very clearly that I believe a 

lot of their data they refer to—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. How flexible are you? I think more than 

anything else it is—look, if there is anyone that understands jurisdictions and how people fight over them, Congress is the best case. 

Mr. JOHNSON. GAO loves the management part of OMB, and we 

work very closely with GAO. And—we have our differences of opinion, and I don’t believe that measuring inputs or using 2-year-old 

data is the way to measure quality. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I would be happy to yield. 

Mr. ISSA. You did your study 2 years after you said, Let’s make 

a change, and you are complaining that it is 2 years old. 

My question is, 2 years after Congress acted, these are the results you have. So they are valid 2 years after Congress empowered 

the administration to make a change. And, quite frankly, Mr. Johnson, you have been with the administration long enough to know 

that this administration, for which I personally voted and support—but this administration has been here 7 years; so we are 

going to be looking back at year 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of this administration, well into the next administration. 


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The question is, was it valid at the time Ms. Farrell did the 

study? And what has been changed, that the two of you can agree 

on, has been changed since that time? That is what we want to 

know. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Let me answer your question. 

The time period, if I am understanding correctly, for the 50 cases 

she talks about, was December and January of 2005 and 2006; that 

is when the reform effort began. And the investigation, the study 

was of cases—as Kathy said, of cases that were investigated by 

DOD, not by OPM. So it is pre-reform; it was an analysis of the 

pre-reform situation. The before, not the after. 

And there is not an assessment that is current or of the reform 

where, after the responsibilities were changed. 

Mr. ISSA. By the way, we are only here on 2-year terms. So we 

are kind of funny about 2 years seeming like an eternity. 

Ms. FARRELL. We are presenting the facts for you to do with as 

you wish. 

The sample in question was taken in January and February 

2006. At the end of that calendar year is when, by law, you were 

wanting the IRTPA requirement to begin with its milestones. The 

50 cases that we looked at were cases that OPM investigated. Keep 

in mind that OPM had had 2 years to plan for the transfer from 

DOD’s investigation service to them, so we are pretty sure that 

those cases are OPM’s. I have talked to the staff, and they do not 

remember any of those cases belonging to the DOD investigators; 

they had already transferred. And, again, OPM let these go 

through their quality assurance program. 

So what were their quality standards? Even if they inherited 

them—and I am not saying that they did, but if they inherited 

them, what quality procedures were in place to keep them from 

slipping through? And that is what is lacking, it is the quality procedures. 

We believe in measurements of goals in order to determine where 

you are going. OMB has led the government in such measurements. The ones that we suggested are suggestions. We think those 

would be good. There are more metrics that could be done. We 

would hope that the current reform committee would consider this 

issue of quality and build quality in, as well as timeliness for the 

future. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I just have a couple of more questions and 

then we will go back to Mr. Issa. And I don’t think that Mr. Holt 

is going to be able to come back, so I think we will start winding 

down. But it has been most helpful. 

Now, in the legislation, there was a mandate that the President 

designate a single agency to direct the day-to-day oversight for investigations and adjudications for personnel security clearances. 

My question is, who did the President designate under the act? 

And do they actually maintain day-to-day oversight? 

Mr. JOHNSON. The President designated OMB. And I was designated. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. So you are the point person. 

Now, why do some intelligence agencies still conduct their own 

investigations and adjudications? We have kind of gone around 

that, but so it is—— 


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Mr. JOHNSON. How I will answer that is the following: 

Particularly in the Intelligence Community, the investigation, 

the clearance investigation, is one and the same with the suitability investigation, and—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. So clearance and suitability are shared 

across the government? 

Mr. JOHNSON. No. In Intelligence Community it is super critical 

of those. That is one and the same: Do they get the clearance and 

are they suitable for employment? It is pretty much the same issue, 

but they are less one in the Interior Department, for instance. And 

that is a gross overgeneralization. 

But also, the feeling was, it was being done on a reasonably 

timely basis already in the Intelligence Community. And so does 

the Intelligence Community continue to do their investigations and 

their adjudications, while we focused on reforming where there 

were timeliness issues, which was the primary issue, and that was 

outside the Intelligence Community? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. My sense in the kind of collective testimony 

today is that you all have essentially placed your pedal to the 

metal on timeliness. And that is important, timeliness. There is no 

one that is going to question or suggest that being untimely is 

okay. It is not. 

But I think that there are other issues to be dealt with here. 

That is my sense, and I think that some of the testimony points 

to that. 

So, again, is there, in your view, a necessity to have some intelligence agencies conduct their own investigations and adjudications? I mean, is that—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. They do it now. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I know that they do. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Or are you saying, should we change that? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I don’t know of a reason to change that. 

Mr. BOSWELL. I certainly agree with that in spades. 

And just to emphasize a point that was made: A condition of employment in, for example, CIA is that everyone is cleared at the 

Top Secret and has SCI access. That is very different from what 

it is in most other organizations. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. So I am gathering from Mr. Johnson and 

Ambassador Boswell that you don’t think that in terms of efficiency 

and other factors, it would make sense to have one agency manage 

all security clearances? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Do you mean, all do the investigation? Because 

right now, the adjudication is done by each hiring agency. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. I understand. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You mean, have one entity do all the investigations? 

Chairwoman ESHOO. One entity in charge of all security clearances. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I do not believe that there should be one agency 

making all adjudication and all investigation. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. And I appreciate that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Because it is the responsibility of each agency. Because they are the pursuer of their mission. They are the ones that 


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understand their mission, and they understand where there might 

be risk and where there may not be risk, and they are best 

equipped to make that adjudication. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. That has been a very long-held view, and 

that is one view. And I wanted to question about that. 

I can see how extraordinarily strongly you feel about it, and I am 

not diminishing what your view is, and it is a very strongly held 

one. 

I am going to stop there. I will go to Mr. Issa now again. 

Mr. ISSA. Ms. Farrell, thank you very much for the work you did. 

I am sorry that we don’t have continuous improvement in the government, that every month you don’t get two or three records to 

look at so that—like polling data or like tracking of any organization. 

UPS knows every day whether they are getting better or worse, 

because there is some amount of quality circle every night on every 

part of the company. Because, by definition, they don’t wait for a 

big study, and then when it comes out say it is 2 years old; they, 

in fact, do it every day. 

So I am sorry that we don’t give you that capacity more. 

I would hope that as quickly as possible you could do at least a 

mini update on what you currently have that is now being accused 

of being dated, because I personally, as least as one member, have 

great confidence that you will find a substantial number of the 

same problems. I am sure there will be some improvements, but if 

you would look again, I think we would all benefit from it. 

Mr. JOHNSON, I AM GOING TO BE LESS KIND, PERHAPS, THAN THE

CHAIRWOMAN. I don’t like the way you are treating this committee. 

I think, in fact, you haven’t talked to your boss. I think that, in 

fact, both the President, the Secretary, the DNI have all made it 

very clear that we want to end stovepiping. 

So when you say that this joint task force that is supposed to be 

finding a way to use clearance process reform as part of the ending 

of stovepiping, you don’t think we are going to get there and don’t 

think you should, I think you are out of line. When you become disingenuous on its face, when you tell me that there is no problem 

with reciprocity, but then of course we are going to continue to 

have different agencies have different fiefdoms in order to determine who is going to be fit to work there, and then we think they 

are going to openly let each other agency with different standards 

look at each other’s information, which ultimately is what you say 

will have to happen. 

Now, Ms. Eshoo and I both, we travel, we have the opportunity 

to work with many of the people in the most sensitive areas around 

the world, and we do see a tremendous improvement in jointness. 

We see a tremendous improvement in the attitude of the operatives 

and the management in the Pak-Afghan border region, in other 

areas of interest. So I am not going to say that there isn’t progress 

being made. I have seen it, the chairwoman has seen it. 

What I am saying is that the Congress was unambiguous in saying that we wanted to get to, essentially, oneness of standard, oneness of process, not levels, but process; so that, in fact, at a given 

level—and I appreciate what you said earlier, that not everyone 

that can see one document can see the other, even if they have the 


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same level of clearance—but the quality and acceptance of each 

other’s clearance in the process. 

Today, you have sort of demonstrated, and I think Ms. Farrell 

shook her head as much as she can, she is probably going to have 

to go take an Advil at the end of this thing, to say that, No, I don’t 

think that a fair oversight of a year and a half ago, 2 years ago 

says that you are making that progress, and today you are not giving us the confidence that you are. 

Now, I want to be wrong. And I certainly am not going to lecture 

you and then not give you a chance to respond. But both for you 

and for Ambassador Boswell, I have got to tell you, I think my interpretation is that Congress wants everybody who can be cleared, 

be cleared to be used in the best place they can. That is part of 

the outreach that the DNI talked about. 

Two, we want to have somebody who has a need to know something to have been cleared at a level, be able to get it. And simply 

going from one agency’s information to another is not a reason to 

redo the same level of security clearance. If there are different levels, fine. But as someone rises to them, and the chairwoman and 

I have the luxury of rising to the highest level. And, by the way, 

not because we would have passed your screening test under the 

rules, but we do have that luxury, so we get to see how important 

it would be for one person to see something else in order to get to 

the bad guys before they get to us. 

So I would like to hear your response on it. I do think Congress 

was unambiguous in saying that we envision no separate standards, no inability to port somebody from the NSA to the CIA, et 

cetera, based on these other factors of individuality being excluded, 

but not based on the documentation or the transparency of that 

documentation as appropriate. 

And I would love to hear your comments. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I don’t think you would find any difference, first 

of all, in terms of what I am suggesting versus what the President 

and Mike McConnell and Secretary Gates and so on would want. 

I would love to have you go back, or have your staff go back 

through the transcript of this meeting and call me; and I will come 

up, and you tell me where, based on what was said here—not what 

was heard, but what was said here—where I disagree with what 

you think the President’s and Gates’ and McConnell’s intents are. 

Because I do not intend to deviate from what they have directed 

us to do. 

What we are saying by ‘‘reciprocity’’ is that all prior investigative 

work should be accepted. You should not have to redo somebody’s 

investigative work simply because you want to take another look 

in another department about whether suitability or clearance over 

here equates to clearance over here. 

I will bet you, if you asked the Members of the House or Senate 

or anybody in the executive branch, senior capacity, whether your 

access to Top Secret information at Interior would qualify you for 

access to Top Secret information at CIA, you would hear a resounding ‘‘no.’’ 

Mr. ISSA. Then the question, and the Chair—look, not all Top Secret is created equal, not all Secret might be created equal, although mostly it is sort of post-CNN usually. And as we go up the 


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levels, I don’t have a problem with you saying something is a higher level. But I do—I do disagree. 

If you categorize something at a given level, and there is a need 

to know in the course of legitimate doing of somebody’s job, which 

in this case is finding the bad guys, which takes all these different 

agencies, including probably a Department of Agriculture person 

who is seeing some movement of something that can blow up a 

building or whatever, then, yes, the categorization should be consistent. That is what Congress told you all. 

So when you say, No, it can’t, yes, you are on the record saying 

exactly what we think is different than what we said and what the 

administration said they heard. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. Well, that is not what was said, sir. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Sir, I hope I didn’t misunderstand what you said 

with your comments earlier. TS/SCI within the Intelligence Community is entirely reciprocal. I mean, there is no stovepiping. An 

enormous progress has been made on this. It is entirely reciprocal. 

You may find some cases where—you know, we all have our stories, but it is entirely reciprocal. 

You mentioned earlier polygraphs. A CI polygraph done by one 

intelligence agency is entirely accepted by any other intelligence 

agency. There is no repolygraphing. 

Mr. ISSA. We are glad to hear that. We don’t know that to be 

true at this point. So, hopefully, we are both hearing the same 

thing. 

Mr. BOSWELL. Likewise, a full-scope polygraph done by one agency is reciprocal to another agency. And they are accepted within 

the agencies that do—or the few agencies that do full-scope polygraphs. 

Mr. ISSA. So if I am at NSA and I am short of polygraph people, 

CIA can help me out and it is completely going to be reciprocal? 

Mr. BOSWELL. I can tell you that the DNI, for example, in 

polygraphing its own people, relies on several agencies to do it. 

They polygraph to common standards. 

Mr. ISSA. That is very good to hear. 

One last thing in closing: The 128 that was mentioned of people 

who have betrayed their country, the statement that they all went 

bad after they had the job, I think flies in the face of what this 

committee has heard in the classified setting about individuals 

who—one or more individuals, who clearly cheated to get into one 

agency, cheated to get into another agency, had lied throughout the 

process, and is currently in the news. 

So I would hope that that would be double-checked before it was 

repeated again, because I don’t think we can fairly think that that 

person or people are outside the 128. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Issa. 

Let me just ask one more question, and then I will make some 

brief closing comments in thanking all of you. I think this has been 

worthwhile. I have learned from it, and that is what hearings are 

for. 

Ambassador Boswell, you said in your testimony that there not 

be any diminution of quality. And I want to get back to the issue 

of quality, because it is so important in what we do. 


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Can you tell us about what proposals you are validating in the 

team effort? How you are addressing this? What metrics you are 

using? Are there any? 

Mr. BOSWELL. Yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Give us some confidence in this. 

Mr. BOSWELL. There are a number of what we call ‘‘demonstration projects’’ that are going on. Now, they will be done in time for 

us to make our proposal to the President. There is a substantial 

degree of quality control and quality checking. These are all to validate the quality in addition to speed up the process, but to validate 

the quality of the new system that we hope to have in place. 

So quality control and attention to quality is absolutely central 

in this process. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Well, let me thank you all for—first of all, 

for your service to our country. That is what we are all here for, 

and we can never, ever lose sight of that. Our work, our oversight, 

the work of the Congress is really on behalf of our country and the 

American people. 

The questions that we raise and what you do in your respective 

areas of the executive branch, we are partners in this. And so while 

some of the questions may ruffle feathers, so to speak, that is very 

healthy. I think it is very healthy, and I hope that you accept the 

questions and the observations with the highest sense of purpose 

that, hopefully, we have asked the questions. 

And so thank you to you, to all of your colleagues that are here 

that are not at the table testifying, for the work that you do. 

I want to acknowledge the work of our staff again. I can never 

thank them enough, because they provide the consistency of all of 

this, and we simply can’t do the work of all of them. 

Mr. Ruppersberger has joined us. And I would like to invite you, 

even though it is the tail end of our hearing. We have completed 

the questions. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I just want to thank you for having this 

hearing, because this is such an important issue for us in the Intelligence Community. You and I have been here for 5 years. And we 

have so many issues that we have to deal with, if we don’t deal 

with this and get it where we need to be and pull it together—and 

it seems there were a lot in the past, a lot of different agencies and 

turf and OMB; and now we—— 

Chairwoman ESHOO. We have gone through some of that. 

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. It is all about the end game, doing it right. 

I don’t need to go any farther. 

Chairwoman ESHOO. Thank you for coming to say that. 

With that, we will adjourn the hearing. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 11:38 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 


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