WASHINGTON POST: "Huge Backlog for Security Checks Tied to Pentagon Computer Woes"; Or, "Because Of Y2K, We're Currently Toast:

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Also from tomorrow's Washington Post

Huge Backlog for Security Checks Tied to Pentagon Computer Woes
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 30, 1999; Page A09

The Pentagon has a backlog of more than 600,000 employees awaiting investigations for security clearances in part because a $100 million effort to computerize the process has been a massive failure, government officials and members of Congress said yesterday.

The new computer system installed by the Defense Security Service, which conducts the background checks, has "not operated as intended, is not year 2000 compliant and may cost about an additional $100 million to stabilize," according to a report this month by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

New background investigations, which are supposed to take 90 days, on average are taking 204 days, the GAO said. Based on a representative sample, it appears that less than 1 percent of the investigations are completed within the 90-day time frame, and almost 10 percent take more than a year, the report said.

"This is a huge, massive failure," a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said yesterday. He added, however, that committee members believe the Pentagon has begun to remedy the situation by appointing retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles J. Cunningham Jr. to head the 2,500-person Defense Security Service.

Cunningham was named to the post on Nov. 8, just five days after the GAO report was made public. He succeeds Steven T. Schanzer, who had headed the security service for 19 months and had been its chief operating officer since 1997.

Assistant Defense Secretary Arthur L. Money also has promised to follow some of the GAO's recommendations, including an immediate "Y2K testing and mitigation" program to ensure that the $100 million computer system, installed in October 1998, will not confuse the year 2000 with the year 1900.

The Defense Security Service receives requests for first-time security checks on about 120,000 people a year. It also conducts periodic reinvestigations of personnel who already hold security clearances. Such reinvestigations are overdue on more than 600,000 employees of the Defense Department and private contracting firms.

As a result of this backlog, "hundreds of thousands of individuals can access classified information without assurances of their trustworthiness and reliability," the GAO concluded.

About 2.4 million military, civilian and contractor employees hold security clearances. Of that total, roughly 524,000 have "top secret" clearances that require reinvestigation every five years. About 1.8 million have "secret" clearances that are supposed to be reviewed every 10 years, and fewer than 100,000 have "confidential" clearances that require renewal every 15 years.

The GAO report attributes the backlog to a dramatic drop in the number of field investigations that occurred when the Pentagon cut back its old system of handling cases "before assuring that the new computer system worked."

Even if the new computer system is made operational, the GAO warned, the Defense Department "may have to replace it in order to meet user requirements."

As of August, the Defense Security Service, with the assistance of the Air Force, had been unable to determine exactly what would be needed to solve the computer system's various hardware and software problems, and estimates of the cost ranged from $100 million to more than $300 million, the report said.

In the meantime, the GAO suggested that the Pentagon identify high-priority security investigations and provide funds to ensure that they are carried out "in a timely manner."

The GAO report was requested by Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who called its findings "very serious." But the release of the report this month was accompanied by little publicity or reaction on Capitol Hill.

That treatment came in sharp contrast to the congressional uproar earlier this year over security lapses and allegations of Chinese espionage at the Energy Department's nuclear laboratories. Four congressional committees held hearings on the national laboratories, the Energy Department appointed a new "security czar," and Congress created a semi-autonomous agency to oversee the facilities that design and build nuclear weapons.

Since 1982, 68 military and civilian employees of the Defense Department and 12 workers at private defense contractors have been convicted of committing espionage. They include such high-profile spies as former Navy communications expert John A. Walker Jr., who gave secrets to Moscow, and Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, who provided top-secret material to Israel.

In addition, "hundreds of other potential instances have been detected," the GAO said, but no convictions were obtained because "individuals defected or committed suicide or the cases were settled in other ways."

) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Has Oprah heard about this...:)?

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), November 29, 1999

Answers

John, please e-mail this to Oprah and tell her that this information is worse than eating beef.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 29, 1999.

Careful what you say, Bardou - mentioning Oprah and beef in front of the Texans on this board probably has the same effect as mentioning non-compliant ATM's and Y2K to the American Bankers Association...:)!

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), November 30, 1999.

No wonder they're worried about terrorists!

Thanks for posting this doozy, John Whitley.

Folks, we done been had. Scammed by .gov, totally enscrewed.

Rankles right up there with the JOPES dopes not remediated.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 30, 1999.


God Bless America




-- the Virginian (1@1.com), November 30, 1999.

This quote is from the document linked below (page 15).

"Despite the best efforts of the DoD to insure AIS systems (weapons/business) are Y2K compliant, not all DoD systems will achieve that goal by 1 January 2000. Many non-DoD systems which interface will also fail to meet the Y2K deadline."

DoD Year 2000 Management Plan Version 2.1 - September 1999

Big surprise.

Not.

-- milktoast (mil@is.toast), November 30, 1999.



Happy New Millennium. You will now be reverting back to the jungle.

-- timebomb blast past (on@your.own in 31 days), November 30, 1999.

Well fellas just put a big old bullseye on the dang building so the Ruskies won't miss it!

I'm being cynical here because I just can't figure out the reason for this release....unless, dare I suggest It was a product of what we called in the old days "good investigative journalism"?

-- HokiePokie (turn@yourself.arnd), November 30, 1999.


Now compare the quote I provided above with this pap. DOD Supplemental Public Affairs Guidance for Y2K

Paging Oprah...call your office!!

-- milktoast (mil@is.toast), November 30, 1999.


Somebody and Something has weakened this country from within, and in 31 days it will break and crumble like rotten fruit when it disintegrates.

-- slime (has@taken.over), November 30, 1999.

Hey, Billy Joe Bob Jeff Clinton hasn't let a lack of security clearances stop the White House staff! When in Rome...

Lt. Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), November 30, 1999.



Response to WASHINGTON POST: "Huge Backlog for Security Checks Tied to Pentagon Computer Woes"; Or, "Because Of Y2K, We're Currently Toast:

"...had been unable to determine exactly what would be needed to fix the hardware and software..." I don't know about you, but quotes like that cheer me up.

-- Spidey (free@last.Amen), November 30, 1999.

Can anyone think of any foreign organisations that would be enthusiastic to exploit this situation?

...I thought you could.

It's potentially quite a big deal, I would guess.

-- no.6 (oh-face@officespace.con), November 30, 1999.


I recall reading somewhere a few months ago that the security checks conducted for the y2k remediation teams were less than stellar, creating the opportunity for backdoor cyber hacks and other cyberterrorism activities. I can see where they wouldn't have waited a year to bring folks on board.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), November 30, 1999.

Is this an example of a non-mission critical system???

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), November 30, 1999.

I noticed that the problems have been going on for a long time (a year?), and the public is just now hearing about them. There may be many Y2K failures that are occurring now, but we won't hear about them for many months, unless they visibly affect the public.

-- Danny (dcox@ix.netcom.com), November 30, 1999.


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