In some cases outsourcing makes sense, but to outsource those responsible for vetting background checks for other independent contractor personnel is clearly penny wise and pound foolish....
These contractors are paid based on how many background checks they perform; this obviously creates a
huge incentive for corner cutting in order to increase the volume of background checks performed...
In the case of the Traitor Snowden, his job hopping history should have been a red flag to give him closer scrutiny. The Alexis case is more problematic, since most of what should have raised red flags took place after the initial background check, (plus his security clearance was lower than Snowden's)
"Malicious mischief" (for which there was no prosecution) could have meant throwing a rock through the window of somebody you had a feud with...
In the Alexis case, a lot of balls were dropped by a lot of people over a number of years, beginning in 2004 when the arrest file for the tire shooting incident never made it to the prosecutor's office:
He was arrested but not charged, Seattle police said. The paperwork apparently was lost.
“That report never got to the Seattle city attorney’s office,” said Kimberly Mills, a spokeswoman for the city attorney. “Consequently, we never filed charges.”
http://www.kirotv.com/ap/ap/crime/alexi ... est/nZ3Ks/
Then because the report on that one incident is so vague and sketchy he's able to to pass the 2007 background check and join the navy and obtain a low level security clearance. (A clearance which was good for 10 years...something else that should probably be tightened up)
Then another ball was dropped in 2010, when a second shooting incident went unprosecuted:
Fort Worth police arrested Alexis in 2010 after he shot through the floor of his upstairs neighbor’s apartment. Alexis told police he was cleaning his gun while cooking and it accidentally went off. The neighbor told police she believed the shooting was intentional.
According to a police report, Alexis complained often that the neighbor made too much noise and confronted her in the parking lot several days before the shooting. When police went to Alexis’ apartment, he didn’t answer their knocks. After paramedics arrived, he came to the door and told police the shooting was an accident.
Police arrested Alexis, but the Tarrant County district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute. According to Tarrant County court records, Alexis was evicted from the apartment weeks later.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-ne ... -worth.ece
Ball number three gets dropped when Alexis receives an honorable rather than a general discharge from the navy. (A general discharge would certainly have raised flags in the vetting process of the contractors job...which is separate from the vetting process done earlier by USIS)
Initial reports indicated the man, Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old Navy contractor, had received a general discharge from the Reserve, a category that suggests an unsatisfactory record. But the Navy official said Alexis had in fact applied for and received an honorable discharge.
A military official said that before discharging Alexis honorably, the Navy had been pursuing a general discharge against him on a series of eight to 10 misconduct charges, ranging from traffic offenses to disorderly conduct.
However, when it became evident the case against Alexis would not support a general discharge, he was allowed to apply for an early discharge under what is known as the Early Enlisted Transition Program, which is only used for honorable discharges, the military official said.
Alexis had a spate of run-ins with both civilian and military authorities while he was in the Navy Reserve as full-time support employee. He was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia, in 2009 on a disorderly conduct charge, [again no prosecution] and was accused of discharging a firearm by authorities in Fort Worth, Texas.
His misconduct in the Navy Reserve included everything from unauthorized absences from work to insubordination and disorderly conduct, including one involving drunkenness.
He received non-judicial punishment from the military for both the military and civilian misconduct charges, said a Navy official, who did not know the exact punishment.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/ ... OF20130917
If a list of charges as long as that (admittedly many of them minor, but repeated) also including two civilian arrests isn't enough to "support" a general discharge, then that's something else that needs serious re-thinking.
But ball drop number four was the worst of all, and could have directly prevented this tragedy:
WASHINGTON — Police in Rhode Island warned the U.S. Navy last month that Aaron Alexis was hallucinating and hearing voices, and security officials at the local Navy base where he worked promised to look into the matter.
Newport Police Lt. William Fitzgerald said Wednesday that officers had faxed a copy of their report to the Newport Naval Station after Alexis told them on Aug. 7 that he was being threatened by unseen people and feared that "some sort of microwave machine" was penetrating his body.
"We faxed it to them that same day, an hour after we spoke to Mr. Alexis," Fitzgerald said. "They said they would look into it, that they would follow up on it. It was a routine thing for us to give them a heads-up."
A Navy official in Washington said Navy security agents in Newport had reviewed the allegations and decided Alexis was not a threat to the installation or to himself. He called the notification "routine" and said security personnel apparently did not interview Alexis or revoke his security clearance.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nav ... 0934.story
So it's "routine" for the navy to receive notifications from civilian police departments that contractor personnel working on their bases are "hallucinating and hearing voices" and think they are "being threatened by unseen people and feared that 'some sort of microwave machine' was penetrating his body" ?
Really? If that's true that's quite disturbing and raises a whole new set of troubling questions....
(But somehow I doubt that's the case. It seems much more likely that it was a case of somebody being either too lazy, incompetent, or poorly trained to follow up properly.)
)