Through the Air Force, quite likely.
It sounds like she was radicalized by Trump's election, which is true for many on the Left. Yet her linguistic skills suggest she was originally trained to do intelligence work on Iran and Afghanistan. Her Twitter account suggests she has been trained to interpret history through the lens of Western colonialism, and thus saw a moral duty to support the Iranians(!) against American 'colonial' policies. That's not new since Trump, but something she seems to have felt for a while -- probably since she was taught to think that way in college or in prep school.
Nobody checks up on that kind of thing? I know you don't list radicalizing college courses on your SF-86, but it seems like questions about your statements against America and for the enemy you're supposedly helping to study would come up in the security review.
UPDATE:
Looks like she was employed less than 3 months before stealing secrets.
UPDATE:
Her high school does not look like a radical outfit that would preach anti-colonial screeds, and she was in the USAF until last year. So where did she learn to think about the world in this Marxist fashion, I wonder? At home, perhaps.
6 comments:
I knew a guy who did security clearance checks for the Navy for a number of years. He talked about this kind of thing coming up a lot. He would flag it, and his flag would be ignored and the person would be given a clearance anyway.
He told me that, once, he flagged someone who already had a low level clearance applying for a higher level of clearance because she had let her boyfriend use a secure system to do his college homework. First, he shouldn't have even been in that room in the first place, but then, the USB drive he had his homework on had a virus and the whole system had to be shut down and repaired. The flag was ignored and she got the higher level of clearance.
He was so disillusioned by this sort of thing that he left the Navy entirely and went into a completely different line of work.
Blow a credit check or get a DUI, and you're screwed; post anti-American diatribes and support the enemy government of Iran ("Death to America!"), and you're golden.
Pretty much.
So where did she learn to think about the world in this Marxist fashion, I wonder? At home, perhaps.
Anti-American history is rampant these days. It could well have been a high school history teacher. Or just stuff a friend recommended, or at home, as you suggest.
I'll venture the internet/social media played a role.
If the top-secret-clearance process were one-tenth as politicized as the IRS, we wouldn't have this problem.
I think... I get the impression... that this type of anti-Americanism is more or less normal for her generation. Not universal, but well within the normal range of opinion for someone of that age.
So it may not be necessary to look for a source for the attitude. It's pervasive.
Post a Comment