Background investigations

Trump transfers background investigation power to Pentagon

The Department of Defense will have full responsibility for conducting background investigations of federal employees and contractors, under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump April 24.

The Trump administration has long telegraphed the transfer, as background investigations for DoD personnel were already assigned to the Pentagon under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2018, and officials maintained that transferring the whole process to one agency would be more efficient.

“Implementing that legislative mandate while retaining the benefit of economies of scale in addressing the federal government's background investigations workload, avoiding unnecessary risk, promoting the ongoing alignment of efforts with respect to vetting federal employees and contractors, and facilitating needed reforms in this critical area requires that the primary responsibility for conducting background investigations government-wide be transferred from the Office of Personnel Management to the Department of Defense,” Trump wrote in the executive order.

The order also mandates that the Defense Security Service, which began the process of taking over security clearance IT systems from the Defense Information Systems Agency in March, change its name to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.