Defense Security
Engineer's
Arrest Shows Weakness with Security Checks
Mostafa
Ahmed Awwad, 35, of Yorktown, Va., a civilian with the U.S. Navy, leaves the
federal courthouse in Norfolk, Va. on Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. (Photo by Steve
Earley/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
The
Virginian-Pilot | Dec 23, 2014 | by Dianna Cahn
A federal indictment against Yorktown resident Mostafa
Ahmed Awwad demonstrates how easy it can be to obtain that kind of access, and
lays bare the weaknesses in the government's process for clearing people to
handle classified information.
In Awwad's case, little has been revealed about the
type of clearance he received or how deeply investigators delved into his
background before he got a job at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth,
where he was a civilian engineer working on construction of the Gerald R. Ford,
a $13 billion aircraft carrier being built at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Awwad, 35, was arrested Dec. 5 by undercover FBI
agents on suspicion of trying to sell design plans for the Ford.
Clearances like Awwad's start with the federal Office
of Personnel Management. Run much like an assembly line, the office handles
roughly 2 million security clearance investigations a year, 600,000 of them for
the military.
Experts say the system's background checks are routine
and often barely get beneath the surface. Once the information gets delivered
to Defense Department decision-makers, processing is slow, causing a backlog.
Red flags can be missed. The case against Awwad paints
a picture of a former Egyptian national who had little trouble slipping through
the cracks with the intent to sell military secrets to the Egyptian government.
Security breaches can have major consequences. Edward
Snowden fled the country after using his top-secret clearance to steal and leak
a host of National Security Agency documents beginning in June 2013. In
September 2013, civilian contractor Aaron Alexis used his clearance to get into
the Washington Navy Yard, where he went on a shooting
spree and killed 12 people.
The incidents highlighted flaws in the security
clearance system and have prompted lawmakers to push for changes that would add
layers of oversight and accountability.
Among the questions that arose after last year's
breaches: Is the government -- and, in particular, the military -- handing out
too many security clearances? Are those who get them given access to too much
information?..
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