Senate Intel panel to investigate military’s security clearance

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to investigate military security clearance in light of the shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard, committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Wednesday.

Feinstein
said the committee would examine the processes that allowed the Navy
Yard shooter to obtain and keep his security clearances despite gun-related
arrests.

{mosads}While Feinstein has been most vocal about Congress taking up
gun control legislation in response to the Navy Yard attack, she told
The Hill Wednesday that she also plans to examine the security clearance
process and look at possible tweaks to the system.

“Clearly, there’s a problem with the security clearance,”
Feinstein said. “We’re going to take a look at it with respect to the
intelligence community at well. I think the processes need to be refined.”

Feinstein pointed to the arrests from gun-related incidents
of Aaron Alexis, 34, the former Navy reservist who police say gunned down 12
people on Monday at the Navy Yard.

{mosads}“With somebody arrested three times, somehow, in a security
clearance, these arrests ought to be picked up,” she said. “The fact that
they’re connected with firearms ought to be picked up.”

Defense officials say Alexis obtained a security clearance
while he was in the Navy and was not subjected to a second background check
when he became a contractor after leaving the service in 2011.

The officials said that under current practices, a
reinvestigation could be triggered when a former military member is
transitioning into contractor or civilian service. But only if the time between
retirement and re-entry is more than two years and if “derogatory information”
is uncovered.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that he was
ordering a military-wide review of security clearance practices in order to “fix
those gaps” that are in the system.

“Obviously, something went wrong,” Hagel said at a Pentagon
press conference Wednesday.

Feinstein connected the failure to flag Alexis’s security clearance
to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who also
received a security clearance as a government contractor.