By George Lobsenz
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, dismayed by new findings that security clearances were granted to 266 Energy Department employees despite their admission of recent drug use, has issued orders barring the issuance of clearances to workers found to have used drugs within 12 months of applying for new or renewed clearances, sister publication The Energy Daily has learned.
Bodman’s Sept. 14 order follows an internal agency review that found that DoE security reviewers over the last seven years inexplicably issued clearances to many applicants with known recent drug use–with most of those clearances being granted by three of the department’s most sensitive organizations: the Pittsburgh Naval Reactors office, the Schenectady, N.Y., Naval Reactors office and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous DoE agency that runs the department’s nuclear weapons complex.
The review conducted by the department’s Office of Health, Safety and Security looked at 4,070 cases processed between October 2001 and March 2007 in which applicants for security clearances admitted to or were discovered to have used drugs in the past. The review was aimed at determining if any of those individuals had admitted drug use, or been found to have used drugs, within 12 months of filling out the Questionnaire for National Security Position, the first step in applying for a clearance.
Bodman ordered the review in the aftermath after the highly publicized October 2006 incident in which local police near Los Alamos National Laboratory found reams of classified lab documents in the trailer park home of a low-level lab subcontractor employee, Jessica Quintana, during a drug raid.
In investigating the security breach, DoE officials questioned how and why Quintana received a security clearance giving her access to sensitive national security documents.
And they discovered to their dismay that Quintana received a security clearance despite having acknowledged relatively recent drug use.
Worse, DoE documents show Quintana received a clearance even though she admitted during her security clearance review that she had been begun using marijuana at about the same time her clearance processing began, and that she had continued to use drugs throughout most of the period associated with the clearance investigation process. Despite the derogatory information, NNSA personnel security officials granted her a security clearance in March 2002, saying the action was justified by unspecified “mitigating factors.”
The new review by the Office of Health, Safety and Security found that of the 4,070 security cases involving past drug use, 266 involved individuals who had used drugs within 12 months of applying for a new or renewed security clearance.
All nine DoE personnel security offices included in the review–which included DoE headquarters and eight field offices–issued at least one clearance to a recent drug user, the review found.
However, the review said the Pittsburgh Naval Reactors (PNR), Schenectady Naval Reactors (SNL) and the NNSA Service Center in Albuquerque accounted for an unusually high percent of the recent drug use cases.
“While PNR, SNR and the NNSA Service Center represented about 64 percent of all DOE clearances, and 75 percent of all clearances involving prior drug use, their contribution to clearances granted after recent drug use is disproportionately high,” according to the August summary report on the review.
“Collectively, they account for granting over 90 percent (243 of 266) of clearances to employees with admitted or discovered recent illegal drug use.”
The report said the reasons for NNSA’s high percentage of the recent drug use cases remains unclear.
“Additional case file reviews, interviews of personnel security managers and staff, and reviews of local procedures would be necessary to understand why PNR, SNR and the NNSA Service Center personnel security organizations (all of which are NNSA organizations) granted the overwhelming majority of clearances to individuals with recent illegal drug use,” the report said.
“Based on [previous analysis of DOE security clearance problems], unclear DOE clearance policy, inadequate training programs, and ineffective quality assurance programs were identified as factors impacting the performance of the DOE personnel security clearance program. These are likely factors contributing to the observations at these three locations.”
The report also indicated that some clearances may have been granted because security personnel organizations were reluctant to deny clearances for fear of lengthy and resource-intensive administrative appeals by applicants.
Whatever the reason for granting clearances to recent drug users, Bodman in a Sept. 14 memo to top DoE officials ordered a stop to the issuance of clearances to such applicants, whatever the mitigating circumstances.
“All applicants for security clearances (including current federal employees and contractor employees applying for a new clearance) who have been determined to have used illegal drugs within the 12 months preceding their completion of a Questionnaire for National Security Positions will be disqualified from further consideration for a security clearance, until such time as they can demonstrate non-use of illegal drugs for 12 consecutive months,” Bodman said in the memo.
Bodman also expanded random drug testing programs to a larger pool of DoE and contractor employees holding clearances.
The review of 4,070 clearances granted to applicants with an “indication” of past drug use also yielded interesting information about the type of drugs involved. While 4,027 of those cases involved marijuana, 46 involved cocaine, 30 LSD, 11 methamphetamines, three PCP, two heroin and 54 involved other hallucinogens such as peyote, mushrooms and ecstasy.