By Patricia H. Kushlis
Here I thought the State Department's inept handling of passport matters had ended last summer. Not to mention Ambassador Maura Harty's too lengthy tenure as head of the Bureau of Consular Affairs when she recently sashayed out the door - apparently with a more than gentle push.
I was wrong.
This late breaking Easter week flap over unauthorized State Department contractor employee access to presidential candidate passport files - evidently not just Obama's but also Clinton and McCain's - is competing for the breaking headline Good Friday announcement with New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama's candidacy for president.
I don't equate the two news items - just that when all is supposed to be quiet - even reverential, it never is. A slow news day? Guess not.
Clearly there's more to the latest passport file snooping story than meets the eye: but in my view, the meeting-the-eye problem has as much to do with State Department mismanagement over a period of years than as it relates to the whiff of a potential election year political plumbers' type scandal. Or maybe the two will turn out to be intertwined. We'll see.
Two of State's many management problems are structural. All have political and potential legal overtones. They can and should be corrected. Now. Not later. I hope Congressional oversight looks into the systemic problems behind this latest Consular Affairs Bureau fiasco as well as focusing on the two companies and the employees involved thereby skimming the surface of the huge management morass lurking just under the surface at Foggy Bottom.
But then the State Department is not known as a Speedy Gonzales. We'll also see if the names now in the media of the employees' companies are delivered by State to Waxman's oversight committee by Monday as he has demanded.
Condoleezza Rice told MSNBC earlier that the passport file access matter is being turned over to State's Inspector General. Well yes. But State hasn't had a confirmed IG since the most recent politically appointed IG, Howard "Cookie" Krongard left under a cloud late last year. Krongard's premature departure happened for excellent reasons relating in part to fallout from yet another private contractor embarrassment, namely trigger-happy Blackwater contract security guards playing shoot-em-up with innocent Iraqis as targets at Mansour Square in the middle of Baghdad in September.
In short, this latest passport file fiasco is yet another outsourcing scandal to be laid at the foot of the current disastrous administration and the ill-fated State Department during Condi's tenure as its Secretary.
Oh and by the way, during his tenure at State, Krongard also managed to all but destroy the IG's office to the point that the few employees left complained to Congressman Henry Waxman's House oversight committee about Krongard's gross mismanagement last fall. State's IG, by the way, does have a responsibility to the Hill as well as the Executive Branch. It's probably a good thing that Krongard is long gone because this new passport file investigation clearly needs someone who will act far more responsibly and rapidly than "cover-up" Cookie would have ever done.
State's Acting IG, William Todd obviously has his hands full this Easter weekend and they aren't with Easter eggs to be hidden for the kiddies. Todd's credentials certainly look better than Krongard's on paper at least. If Todd and the head of the office's Investigations Unit handle this one right, it may be the case that makes their careers. Or if not, the one that breaks them.
Meanwhile, State has four, if not five or more fundamental problems that relate to this latest mess.
The first problem is the over-zealous outsourcing to the private sector of work that should be being undertaken by career professionals and not minimum-wage contract employees with minimal background checks. The second problem is a Department that is strangling itself and its accountability with top heavy hierarchy as a result of an outdated management structure: it doesn't manage itself well - as the latest AFSA employee survey demonstrated - so how can it possibly begin to oversee outside contractors adequately. The third problem is the lack of a functioning mechanism to enforce internal integrity. The fourth problem is the Constitutional question of invasion and protection of individual privacy. And the fifth problem is the over-politicization of the bureaucracy.
Outsourcing run amok again
My observations this time around focus on only the first issue: the perniciousness of far too much private sector outsourcing. This questionable practice began years ago to "prove" that the U.S. government was smaller than it really was. The practice was overused by both Clinton and Bush I administrations but has, over the past seven years, mushroomed into Teapot Dome proportions in all branches of the federal government under W's benighted presidency.
Would someone please tell me why any contract employee with only a minimal background check is allowed access to your and my passport files - let alone those kept in a "special section" or sections monitored only by electronic security flags? Or why, when the breaches occurred, the information was not passed up the hierarchical line?
Obviously such employees have access to buildings and data that those of us who worked for the Foreign or Civil Service with top secret or more clearances for years do not because we turned in our badges and therefore, just might, overnight, in State Security's eyes, have metamorphosed into security risks. Give me a break. It's nonsense, but that's the way it is. Clearly, State's Office of Security has far more information on us than on any contract agency, or subcontract agency contract employees - but I guess that's immaterial to the problem at hand. Or maybe not.
I don't mind being kept out; I can meet friends elsewhere where the food's better, but I do object to those who should not be there, ushered in.
According to a teleconference press briefing with select reporters conducted Friday March 21 by State Department Spokesperson Sean McCormack and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, there were two (unnamed) contract agencies, three (unnamed) locations in the Washington area and three (unnamed) employees involved but the briefers refused to divulge the particulars.
The number, according to AP in a follow-up report, has subsequently risen to four contract employees. They now include the person who called up Hillary Clinton's name in a training session last summer but was only reprimanded, not fired.
Stanley Inc and TAC
I understand that AP has now identified the two Virginia based "beltway bandits" er companies as Stanley Inc and The Analysis Corp. I don't know much about the latter, but here's some of the Stanley Inc. story.
Stanley Inc. has had a close relationship with the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs since 1992 when George H.W. Bush was still president and when State first contracted out substantial parts of the passport issuing business. This was the same year that there was another passport file breach of security at State. That one turned out to be politically motivated. It did not involve Stanley or any other contractor. At the time, contractors then were only a small part of State's landscape but the building was rife with political appointees seeking to keep themselves on the federal payroll.
Here's Consortium News' description of the 1992 event: the "assault on Clinton"s patriotism moved into high gear on the night of Sept. 30, 1992, when Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Tamposi - under pressure from the White House - ordered three aides to pore through Clinton's passport files in search of a purported letter in which Clinton supposedly sought to renounce his citizenship." As CN's Robert Parry also observed, no letter was ever found. . . but the Bush administration used the "leak" to smear Bill Clinton and question his loyalty in a tightening race.
That was then, this is now
Stanley Inc. was not implicated then nor should it have been - and the two contract agencies now involved - may ultimately be found only to have been derelict in screening and monitoring employees. Both, looking at their senior management, should, however, have known better.
The trail could, of course, lead to yet unnamed subcontractors and people with yet to be identified political motivations: Stanley Inc, has, after all, hired Northrup Gruman as a subcontractor for Immigration projects in Vermont and California and also Choctaw Archiving Enterprise of Durant, Oklahoma. Clearly, Stanley - despite it's listing as one of Fortune's 100 best companies to work for - does not treat all its employees equally well - or these reports of unionization and employee disgruntlement would not be in the public record.
Regardless, what past history shows is that Americans' passport files should not be accessible to anyone other than trustworthy career employees with up-to-date security clearances, secure State Department positions and a specific need to access the files. Otherwise, the temptation for hanky-panky is just too great.
Meanwhile, Stanley Inc, TAC and their sub-contractors are profiting well from all the additional passport issuance requirements thanks to tightened homeland security provisions in the wake of 9/11. The fact is that much of the money that we pay for new and renewed passports - now nearly $100 a shot - is essentially a pass-through to these companies, their subcontractors and a few others for various passport related services. I may have it wrong, but in my view perhaps more should be kept in-house to ensure security of passport files by paying the salaries and benefits of career State Department employees with security clearances and secure positions rather than being shoveled out the side door to contractors with employees who have obviously neither been properly screened nor monitored - despite what contractors advertise about their employees on their websites.
Stanley, as Eric, one of our commenters who follows consular matters closely, pointed out earlier today, just publicly announced another five year $570 million contract from the Bureau of Consular Affairs. AP has now also reported that relationship. Those services, according to Stanley's press release on March 17, 2008 include "production, operational and business process support training, procurement, administration and evaluation of critical supplies, and facilities management support at the four Passport Centers and 14 Passport Agencies nationwide along with the Headquarter's support offices."
Whether the contract employees in question were, as Condoleezza Rice would like us to believe, just curious naifs or whether there's something more nefarious to the story, I don't know. But as this tale unravels, I'm having more and more doubts about buying in to the "curiosity-killed-the-cat" theory.
As State and Congress's investigations of this latest State Department flap progress, however, the investigators will surely need to examine who gave what orders to whom and when. And who got paid for what and by whom.
If Obama's files had only illegally been accessed by one individual at one location at one time, I think Condi's idle curiosity proposition would be credible. That's likely what happened to Hillary Clinton's file when it was accessed by the trainee in a class last summer. Not as likely for Obama's: since it was accessed at different locations by two different employees at three different times according to State's March 21 on-the-record briefing.
I think is up to the Congressional oversight committees and investigative reporters with far better access to the department's inner workings than I have to ferret and sort this stuff out. While they're at it, they might also ask why the TAC contract employee who hacked into McCain's file was only disciplined - whatever that means - while two who worked for Stanley Inc. had already been fired. Maybe this has all to do with legal accountability reasons as some news reports suggest and they too should have been kept on the payroll until the investigation is over.
Also might be interesting to know if any other presidential candidate files were surreptitiously entered in January too - and if so by whom and why.
This tale has just begun to unravel so stay tuned. Meanwhile, I'm about to give up on the Easter Bunny this year.