The recent NSA scandal seems to most to be the product of a rogue IT wiz who became disenchanted with the 'system'.
But Snowden is only the tip of the iceberg. The vetting of people entrusted with the nation's deepest, darkest secrets is no longer the selective and costly process it once was so that our secret are no longer the purvey of a few but of many too many people.
The problem started a while back, as Bush wished to diminish budgetary concerns by splitting duties into what the government is doing directly and what is done through contractors. This, Bush averred, would be the perfect recipe for avoiding 'big government'.
Now there hasn't been a Republican, or a Democrat, who really truly has made good on the promise to 'shrink' government so far. But what Bush said, and it is recorded, is that "firing a federal employee being almost impossible, the answer to not making government larger, is to entrust many sections or duties of the military and government to private contractors."
It seems as if Bush was the creator of a behemoth that is harder to unwind than a federal agency. The federal contractors are here to stay, and they are bilking billions from the government.
What they are also doing is putting the government's secrets at risk. How are they doing that? Simple; they do their own vetting process of people who will be the holders of a top secret clearance, the so called 'background' checks. The process, which is supposed to be lengthy and thorough, and used to be so in the past, has been streamlined to the point that an enourmous number of people now hold the top secret clearance. Yes you heard right: Enormous.
More than 500,000 people have gotten a top secret security clearance through a government contractor.
The pervasive aspect of contractors' all encompassing reach is frightening. These companies have been awarded contracts not on the basis of their efficiency or competence, but most likely in all cases due to influence on the congressman or official that approves of the contract. This has become in short a free for all, and a lot of duties and areas of expertise have been moved outside the confines of the secretive buildings in which our secrets were once jealously guarded. And the contractors pay their employees much more than the government. So where is the efficiency? And more importantly, who is holding our secrets?
One unsaid factor that prompts the government to hire contractors is the fact that by doing so it can hide the true cost of employing outside companies to do the government's work, or the true 'cost of governing'.
Welcome to the military industrial complex in its biggest incarnation to date. Crony capitalism meet crony government practices.
What is lost in this equation? Simple: good, qualified, earnest people who would love to work for the government, but who are squeezed out by the stifling and abrasive ways of the agencies in which they work, the lower pay, and the constant undercutting and stress that comes with a government job. So the best candidates go outside the government system and get paid a ton more by private contractors, where they meet up with fresh faced juniors who are barely out high college, or high school. With that shift in the work force however, diminishes both the allegiance and the fidelity expected of people in such delicate positions.
Source : Government executive/ 6.28.13
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