Court Opinion

ID: 9455172
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:13:18.874218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:29.200495
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
1 concur in the majority’s conclusion concerning the right of confrontation issue and the conduct of the interview. However, I would remand this case to the Central Board for a determination of the relationship between the alleged homosexual conduct and the ability of appellant to protect classified information. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
*241Appellant held a Secret clearance during most of the time between 1957 and 1965. In 1962, five years after obtaining his first Secret clearance, he applied for a Top Secret clearance. No immediate action was taken on this application. After two more years, during which appellant continued to work on classified projects, he was called for an interview at the Office of Naval Intelligence. Through appellant’s admissions at this interview, the Government learned that he was a homosexual. In spite of these disclosures, appellant’s security clearance was not revoked — he continued to have access to secret documents — for an additional year. I can only conclude from this delay that not even the Defense Department was exercised about appellant as a security risk.
The Defense Department’s lassitude was justified. Appellant was not a new and untested employee. From the record we must assume that he had not misused any classified information over a period of nearly eight years. But despite this record of reliability, the Board made no real effort to show why its factual findings relating to homosexuality precluded continued security clearance in this case Compare Norton v. Macy, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 214, 417 F.2d 1161 (1969). Generalized assumptions that all homosexuals are security risks1 certainly cannot outweigh almost eight years of faithful service. Even before Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377 (1959), it was firmly established that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment encompasses the “right to hold specific private employment and to follow a chosen profession free from unreasonable governmental interference.”2 As a result of the Board’s actions, appellant’s ability to obtain employment in his profession is at least seriously impaired. I would conclude on this record that the action of the Central Board in withdrawing security clearance after eight years of reliable service did not comport with the requirements of due process. Assumptions predicated on appellant's unfortunate affliction unrelated to the facts, of this case cannot provide a legal basis for effectively denying him access to his livelihood.
The Board does not explain why a finding that appellant had been involved in some isolated instances of homosexual conduct should lead to a conclusion that appellant had not shown himself fit to hold a security clearance. The only explanation is contained in a “statement of reasons” furnished to appellant when he lost his clearance. Those “reasons,” however, did not explain the Board’s actions. They were merely one-sentence recitations checked off from a list previously prepared for denying security clearances generally. There was no attempt to show how these stock conclusions had been drawn from the circumstances of this case. In fact, several of the enumerated “reasons” seem to bear little or no relationship to the facts of this case. For example, the Board denied the clearance partially because appellant’s homosexual acts indicated that he was not “reliable or trustworthy.” But no rational connection between isolated homosexual activity and reliability is demonstrated by facts as distinguished from unsupported assumptions. If the Board has any evidence indicating either that this appellant specifically, or that homosexuals taken as a group, are not trustworthy or reliable, it ought to include that evidence in this record.
The Board also stated that appellant’s homosexual actions were so reckless that they indicate the kind of instability that would lead appellant to disclose classified information. Again, no relationship appears between the facts brought out at the hearings and the Board’s finding. The conclusion is simply baldly stated as though no facts were necessary to support it, and the *242central, uncontested fact in this case— that in appellant’s eight years of handling classified materials the Board has been unable to point to a single breach of security — is simply ignored.
The Board’s finding that appellant might be subject to blackmail for his activities may well have some basis in common experience. However, appellant freely told his interrogators of his homosexual experiences and his supervisor of the charges against him. Certainly after the publicity surrounding this court suit, his alleged homosexuality is no longer a basis for blackmail, if indeed it ever was.
In sum, the clear impression left by reading the record in this case is that appellant was denied his clearance simply because of homosexual acts, without any effort to determine whether his status as a homosexual related to his abilities to protect classified information. The Board’s ruling is in effect a bill of attainder against all homosexuals, at least insofar as obtaining security clearance is concerned.
In cases where national security is at stake, wide discretion must of course be accorded the determinations of the Board. However, there must in all cases be some rational relationship between the facts found and the actions of the Board. Without such relationship, it would be pointless to accord appellant any procedural rights. The burden on appellant to prove his entitlemement to Top Secret clearance, or even to continuing Secret clearance is great indeed.3 The least he should be able to expect from the Board before it effectively takes away his right to earn his living in his chosen profession is a decision in which there is a rational nexus between the facts and the conclusions drawn therefrom.

. See Note, Government-Created Employment Disabilities of the Homosexual, 82 Harv.L.Rev. 1738, 1749-1751 (1969).

. Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 492, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 1411, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377 (1959).

. It is not altogether clear from the regulations that a person has the same burden in continuing his clearance as in obtaining clearance in the first instance. In either event, at least the applicant must be given a “written statement of the reasons why his access authorization may be denied or revoked, which shall be as comprehensive and detailed as the national security permits.” Executive Order 10865, § 3(1), 25 Fed.Reg. 1583 (1960). See Department of Defense Directive 5220.6, § IV(C) (5) (July 28, 1960), 25 Fed.Reg. 14396 (1960). This Executive Order clearly indicates, as required by Greene v. McElroy, supra Note 2, that the Board’s written statement of reasons should contain facts, rather than unsupported assumptions, at least “as comprehensive and detailed as the national security permits.”