Deputy Director of NBIB, Mert Miller resigned yesterday.
And today…
Just as the Defense Department is developing a plan to move the security clearance process for its personnel back into the Defense Security Service, two lawmakers want the Government Accountability Office to study the previous consolidation back in 2005.
Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) wrote to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro on Feb. 6 asking for an analysis of what went right and what went wrong when DoD moved its security clearances to the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Investigative Service (FIS) nearly 12 years ago.
Mert Miller? Didn’t he just take that job in like the past six months?
No, I double-checked, I am thinking of the NBIB Director, Charlie Phalen, who took over around Nov 2016. Miller has been with OPM for some time it appears. Still, wonder why he is leaving now (although I did not see any news stories to that effect). He does not appear to be a political appointee.
Yeah, he’s been around for a long time. Of course now that mention it, I’ve seen no official statement. Now I’m wondering if I’m just spreading rumor. I try not to do that, there is enough BS in this job without that.
However DSS taking back over the work seems likes it is on track, despite OPM telling us otherwise.
@fed-investigator I did see that verbiage that directed DoD to study the possibility of taking back investigations. Overall I think its a good idea but at this point it could be like the adage, “don’t change horses in the middle of a stream” or something like that. Could just add a lot more confusion to the whole mess.
On a not completely unrelated topic, I did see an article about the large number of Obama-era political appointees at the Pentagon who have departed without any replacements in place. Some years ago I knew a guy who was in line for one of these political jobs, I think in the end he was waiting to get the job longer than he was in it. All the bigger fleas have to be appointed before the lesser fleas can even be formally nominated. Given all that, this would not be a good time to dump a new mission back on to the DoD.
“The legislators are asking GAO to look at everything from the timeliness for investigations by DSS from 1998 through 2016, including for top secret periodic reinvestigations, National Agency Checks with Law and Credit (NACLC) checks for secret level employees and a breakdown of year by year staffing levels for DSS, including government and contractor, to support the workload, to comparing the investigator’s handbook in 2005 to 2016’s version.
Another interesting part of the request is McCaskill and Tester want GAO to review high visibility investigations conducted by OPM for Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Maj. Nidal Hassan and Aaron Alexis and whether using DoD/DSS investigative policies and procedures would’ve made any difference.”
Uhm, yeah. Hopefully it does not take one long to see how ridiculously bloated (proverbial “red tape”) the whole stupid process has gotten and glad to see somebody finally asking the right question about how effective the process really is! Frankly, it’s gotten too dang judgmental up front. What happened to “innocent until PROVEN guilty?” Bring back THRESHOLDS for Christ sake! There is no need to keep going down short baseless rabbit holes all the time for stupid little things that have no place in an investigation, that should be focused on looking for the larger picture when there is reason to believe it needs to be done… and NOT making every stupid little thing in a persons background a quote “issue!” Look for REAL “issues!”