Parts 1-4 presented the case that the willingness of the Intelligence Community (IC) seniors to weigh-in late in an election cycle with a scurrilous conspiracy theory-with nothing to back it up-in defense of the crackhead son of the presidential candidate they favored-was shameful and says a lot about them. But the larger concern is what these senior leaders left in their wake over time in the organizations they led and how the emergence of their mentees-or maybe a better term is disciples-acolytes and my fav-sycophants-those people in leadership and positions of responsibility-who have risen in the ranks and taken their place to infect some of the events of the 21st century-and will continue to do so.
What do you do about them? This is a bit of a challenge to detail, at risk of being accused of standing at the precipice straddling the conspiracy theory drop on the one side, and the paranoid delusional drop on the other.
I guess I’m old school about these things, but what you do about them is you deal with them as you would any other employee until such time as they prove to be an exception to the rule. In the case of the Trump-or any White House (WH) security leaks, it is inexplicable to me how such a thing could happen-continue to happen-and then perpetuate into a story that, of course-reflected badly on the inexperienced government guy who likely never held a clearance in his life, Trump.
This type of job-serving in the WH-working on the president’s staff-contributing to efforts that implement and further the policy of the United States of America-is a privilege and an honor: such a job should be enough to put a skip in the step of any civil servant in America. Most employees in these jobs have submitted burdensome security paperwork and also taken a lifestyle or counter-intelligence polygraph with their “parent” organization (CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, NGA, etc.) A typical polygraph is updated every five years in conjunction with your basic clearance authorization. In “special” cases for “special” projects requiring “special” or bigoted access, you basically agree that you can be poly’d anytime with little to no notice as a condition of having such access.
When the government grants the right to the types of access that results from this process, you have no rights to any of the information you produce or interact with-nor protection from the government deciding to audit your computer interactions on government computers at those classification levels. When you sign on the computer a message comes up that tells you that-every time. And OBTW, with the apparent exception of HRC, you can’t conduct business at those classification levels on non-government computers (government contractors are a special case but not exempted from scrutiny in any way) or unclassified systems.
What I would have done and would advocate to somebody in this situation where information is leaking out to the LSMBTG*, and it is a specific subject matter that is traceable or trackable to one particular business unit-I would order a poly update for the lot of them with the polygrapher focusing on the issues of unauthorized disclosure of information.
This may seem like somewhat of a radical step, doesn’t it? Hell no! If you play footsie with matters like this the next thing you know somebody sets up an unclassified server and starts sending work home to it-classified or not-because they sense that the environment will tolerate it.
Most of these security rules and regulations are not in place to catch scum buckets who break their oaths of office and violate the security guidelines they agree to as a condition of employment: there are serious violations every year, but they are relatively few and far between-notwithstanding they may be very serious. No-these rules and regulations are in place to keep honest people honest.
I would go one step further than this if the situation-the leaks-continued-by bringing in a Defense Intelligence Agency or government contracted polygraph team-on site-and I would promote it as actively as a charity drive or a Combined Federal Campaign fund raiser or an LGBTQ pride day.
So just a hypothetical-let’s say I was on a red line (top level security clearance-compartmented access required-communications device) doing a conference call with the Ambassador of Ukraine and staff-maybe 9 people total involved in the call. We wake up the next day and there is a story written by the LSMBTG about the conversation that posted on social media as if they participated in the call. What could you do about it?
If it were a breach where classified information was leaked, or even if it was about sensitive matters, the publishing of which reflects badly on America, I would call in my security chief and direct him to update the security status of everyone on the call, up to and including polygraphs: Immediately-like yesterday-with special emphasis on any discussions with any unauthorized person.
Now I know what you are thinking-one of the participants was this Army fellow, LTC Weaselman-he does not have a poly-the Army doesn’t require them to have a poly for the position and we don’t have a separate policy requiring it. Was he one of the 9? Yes. We will update the policy when time permits, for now we are treating this as a national security matter-we need him to undergo a polygraph-as a condition of his position and if that does not work-release him back to the Army immediately and upgrade what they call in the Air Force the “Green Door” requirement to reflect the need for a polygraph: done.
When faced with the situation of unprecedented leaks from the white house and the National Security Council Staff-right off the bat as a problem that needed to be dealt with-I would have the head of security bring in a full-time polygraph team and if the leak concerned-say, Ukraine and recent coordination efforts-I would poly that team-like ASAP. Most of the folks working from IC agencies have polys-are used to security processes-and already make it a best work practice not to talk about business that is not meant to talk about outside of the realm of the secured environs of everyday work.
In the case of folks who work in the big IC agencies who routinely work in classified environments these security protocols are like second nature and a habit that is deeply ingrained in the workforce. And I am belaboring the point because these employees know intuitively, they are breaking the law and their oaths: and you have to go for the jugular in this case. When you have politically motivated leaks or leaks intended to undermine daily business or target a boss or someone like the president, you can be certain it is somebody who is deliberately violating a code of behavior and oath they willingly executed and agreed to as a condition of employment-and they must be treated accordingly else bad things start to happen in the work environment.
I would communicate that message throughout the workforce to the 99.9% of people doing the right thing and bring peer pressure to bear on the person violating security protocols. Make no mistake about it, this is criminal activity-security violations-under USC Title 18.
I guess I have officially become old school these days, but I am not a fan of sugar coating or soft pedaling the type of treasonous, scummy activity that was being done to Trump by his staff. In my mind the leaks from the White House were a symptom of the bigger issue that he had people in place who were not loyal, did not support his agenda, did not appear to like or respect him-which is not a mandatory element of service. Where it crosses the line is where they are willing to lie, cheat and steal-violate their oaths of office-to stop him, including leaking classified and sensitive information such as Presidential communications with world leaders.
I believe a focus on the white house environment is the best way to come to grips with how deleterious and infectious these “spin-off leaders” like this (those anointed for advancement-selected out of the pack-by leaders like Brennan) can be to what is in effect-unit discipline and cohesion-bringing about a toxic work environment-with a spirit of something stronger than independent thought and rebellion, but rather focused on the action part of the views expressed by Farkas that I detailed previously.
I’m not a security guy-but I had a clearance for all of my years of military, government and contract service. I produced original classification authority products in several jobs over that time, took my first polygraph in 1976 when it was extremely rare for the Army to administer them on other than criminal referrals unless you were working compartmented projects routinely, and I’ve had dozens since that time.
I also had the privilege of being one of the “lotto” winners who was notified by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that with the Chinese breach of-among other things-the OPM security applications repository of the Standard Form 398 clearance applications data base, the Obama administration was going to pay for a year of credit monitoring for me: yea! Turns out that although we were told at the time that at least 10 million people were compromised, later information upped that figure to 22 and I’ve seen a figure as high as 27.5 million people, mostly federal employees.
That sounds bad, but just consider that if you were unfortunate enough to be a relative-mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter of Max Dribbler-you were screwed in the drive by-cause the Obama administration wasn’t going to pay to monitor your credit or do anything for you. Even though each SF398 contained your references and relatives name, social security number, date and place of birth, current address, etc.: so even conservatively if 20 million SF398s were stolen, that means 120 million Americans were compromised (20 million 398s with five personal references each.)
Many like me had the additional bad luck to be due for an update during the compromise time period where the government “temporarily” suspended the web-based application where the record of my four decades of SF398s resided, advising applicants to fill out the 398 “as if it was your first time:” which would have been ridiculously difficult to do, even with hard copies of everything I had ever submitted. There is a big difference between the time required to fill out an “updated 398” from your last submission and a new 398 like some newbie or rookie (like what was the number and name of that street you lived on while I was in OCS back in August 1982?)
Temporarily turned out to be over six months before I found the “EPSQ” web-application functional enough to take the application-I called and emailed my buddy leading security at least every three weeks to advise him of this problem, which ate up just about every day of the grace period I had to submit the paperwork and redo my poly before a suspension was mandated.
Just to complete the clown-circus-like experience many of us went through with the compromise of our information in the form of the 398 breach, new security application requirements had been implemented in the wake of the Snowden security compromise requiring detailed financial information to be submitted that basically mimicked requirements already in place for senior executives who were program managers who had to submit financial disclosure forms every year.
And I should get back to my recommendation, but just to show how feckless our government can be in these instances, I had taken to paying for everything with one credit card to build up credits for airline mileage that we cashed in for flights to visit our kids-particularly our son at Fort Riley, Kansas who was back and forth to Iraq several times over this period. Gasoline, groceries, house payment, utility bill, home improvements, restaurants-schtuff-you name it, I used the card for it and paid it off monthly.
I reported it just like the new requirements mandated, but the contracted security person who did the final interview of the 398 information prior to the poly thought it was too much of a big old red flag to have a credit card-even with a zero balance-that showed usage of like $60K for the year. I was like-make a note to explain it-there is no mystery here because I am telling you why it is so much-and you can see it for yourself in the year end statements I have (right here.) I didn’t feel right about it, but in the end we removed that entry from the update because “it was too much of a red flag.”
With Farkas willingly going public with her modern-day Paul Revere-like, town crier “get the bum out” sentiment, dismissing her as inexperienced and perhaps over the top is an easy and logical thing for those of us “wizened” in the ways of today’s government workplace. Was she just a unicorn, a lone delusional person out of the over one million federal workers who developed this viewpoint-somewhat the tip of the “anti-Trump” movement spear? She was obviously the product of her environment, education, with opinions and beliefs formed from what she heard, read, consumed and absorbed from those around her.
The folks in and around the Trump NSC seemed to be the core element pushing for-and with the wherewithal-to do the most damage to Trump in the long run through their deep swamp connections and the links and sources with congressional democrats.
Max Dribbler
27 March 2022
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“This is a bit of a challenge to detail, at risk of being accused of standing at the precipice straddling the conspiracy theory drop on the one side, and the paranoid delusional drop on the other.”
These days, how do you tell one side from the other? 🙂
“The folks in and around the Trump NSC seemed to be the core element pushing for-and with the wherewithal-to do the most damage to Trump in the long run through their deep swamp connections and the links and sources with congressional democrats.”
And therein lies our basic problem. The procedures were designed to catch the occasional “bad apple”; but, it breaks down when the whole bushel is bad.