That was the intelligence briefing you just smoked ....
We have to consider that, at some point, it's kind of like finding a proper jury for the OJ Simpson or Oliver North trials.
Nasor said:
Have you ever copied a DVD? Congratulations, you just committed a felony!
As Nasor points out, there are some pretty trivial felonies; the first thing I thought of when reading through the bit about illicit substance users is that they could probably use a few pot smokers over at DOD. With the trials of Simpson and North, a common joke was, "What twelve people are you going to find in this country who don't know who ______ is, and hasn't heard the sensational story?" The implication, of course, was, "Do you really want these people deciding justice?"
Similarly, DOD, perhaps even more than the rest of Washington-insider culture, is removed from reality. This is largely by design, but the result is that the vast majority of people considering how to make our lives secure without disrupting the daily experiences of the average American have no idea how the average American lives. These are people paid to go about their lives with a stick up their asses. And to a certain degree, that's the way it ought to be. After all, they play with some really sensitive equipment.
The problem that presents itself is one of proper discrimination:
“This is not some kind of affirmative action for convicts,” Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said. “We’re not talking about giving clearances to psychopaths and drug dealers, but preserving the ability to employ people who may have been convicted of a crime decades ago in a period of their life they have long since outgrown.”
Removing the restriction opens the door to security clearances for high-profile felons, such as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the senior White House aide whose prison sentence was commuted by President Bush last week.
“Could a Scooter Libby be hired by DoD?” Aftergood said. “The answer is, he wouldn’t be automatically disqualified.” (
Schor and Tiron)
Flip a coin, roll dice, draw straws. Throw darts while blindfolded if you want. It seems a practical tangle to sort out who gets in and who doesn't. Part of me says this is a good idea, and part of me recoils. On the one hand, its worth reminding that this isn't supposed to be a blanket clearance for convicts; to the other, perhaps most worrisome aspect comes via three Democratic senators:
“As all other members, we would be deeply concerned about the grant of security clearances to persons who have been imprisoned for more than a year or who are current drug users,” Rockefeller and Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in an statement of “additional views” accompanying their panel’s report on the bill.
But the three Democrats endorsed repealing the limit on security clearance standards to expedite the ongoing joint effort to streamline the complex system that began with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which consolidated the country’s intelligence agencies under one national director.
“[W]e have heard no reason to question … the assessment of DoD and the Armed Services Committee that national security can be protected without this one DoD-specific statute,” the Democrats wrote. (ibid)
In the first place, government efforts to "streamline"
anything tend toward disaster. Secondly, we have
every reason to question the assessment of DoD and the SASC that national security can be protected, regardless of whether we're talking about one DoD-specific statute or the whole damn schmoo. A woman at a flight school in the middle of nowhere who sleeps poorly these days because she
didn't call the police about a suspicious man who wanted to learn to fly but didn't care about landing is one thing. But the folks at DoD? The Senate Armed Services Committee?
This is the sort of thing that gives me a headache. In my social circles, we have an exclamation for this sort of conundrum: "God
damn it!"
And then you shrug and just let it go. Because either way they go, we're just as screwed tomorrow as we were yesterday.
I mean, it's not even like there was some advocacy group out there shouting for this change. DoD wants it. Is this another case where they're neck-deep in a shitty situation and they're suddenly having trouble finding people to fill the posts?
Supervisor: What about this one? Good Arabic, and look at this: he minored in cartography? Who the hell minors in cartography?
Human Resources: Apparently a gay, Lebanese-American architecture student?
Supervisor: Damn it! Okay, what about this one?
Human Resources: You should see what FBI sent over on him. Pothead. Mushrooms, LSD. Ever hear about that dude that fell out of the window at that Oklahoma junior college because he was trying to fly from Florida to British Columbia?
Supervisor: Really? That's him? Always imagined him ... uh ....
Human Resources: Less white?
Supervisor: Yeah, that's it. I mean, look at him. He looks a lot like Jesus. In that one movie.
Human Resources: Passion? Last Temptation?
Supervisor: No, no. The good one.
Human Resources: (shrugs)
Supervisor: (snaps fingers) Nazareth! That's it. Jesus of Nazareth!
Human Resources: No he doesn't.
Supervisor: Uh-huh!
Human Resources: Nuh-uh! He does not look like freakin' Zeferelli Christ!
Supervisor: Whatever. Don't get your panties in a knot. Anyway, he speak Arabic?
Human Resources: Actually, the phone message he left earlier sounded like a drug-induced episode. Speaking in tongues.
Supervisor: Tongues? What, you mean like holy rollers and snake handlers and all that?
Human Resources: Bob Tilton was always my favorite. Baya-lo-shema-lo ....
Supervisor: Who the hell was Bob Tilton?
Human Resources: Back in the '80s. Looked like Satan. Drove out stomach demons and kidney demons over the tube. You know, "Place your hand on the screen. Stomach demons! I have dominion over you! In Jesus' name I command thee, come out!"
Supervisor: Hey, yeah. I remember him. That was pretty good.
Human Resources: Thanks. I always thought you had pretty lips.
Supervisor: What?!
Human Resources: (coughs) Ahem. Uh, er ... anyway, pot dude. Speaks in tongues.
Supervisor: Hmm ... aw, hell. Put him over in translation. Nobody'll know the difference, anyway.
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