• 4 months ago
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess prior, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke about vetting standards between intelligence agencies.

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Transcript
00:00So, this could be to Director Dixon or Secretary Harris or both, the continuous vetting in
00:08the National Background Investigation Service is not mandatory for all the agencies and
00:13departments to use as their system under the Counterintelligence Security Agency.
00:19This directly impacts oversight by ODNI as a security executive agent.
00:26Additionally, contractors have a real tough time being able to plan and train to these
00:32very different systems, and it's not easy to track whom to contact for security clearance
00:36tracking and reciprocity.
00:38So the DCSA and NBIS systems of security clearance do not cover or support DIC.
00:46Why is that, and what is the plan going forward?
00:49In particular, what about reciprocity for employees that are moving, for example, from
00:53DIA to DIA?
00:56I will take that one, sir.
00:58You're absolutely right that DCSA does not cover the intelligence community.
01:02We have a number of agencies within our community, and we essentially allow them to determine
01:07the types of risks that they're willing to take as they're bringing on board their folks.
01:10So they don't do their own.
01:11Many of them do their own investigative service.
01:16They also have enhanced vetting processes that they include to include polygraphs, medical,
01:23some psychological screenings that DCSA does not provide, but those are what they believe
01:28they need to bring on board the kinds of folks that they need for their particular workforce.
01:32To expect DCSA to do that sort of tailoring for different agencies to deliver what they
01:38need is something that we wouldn't put on them.
01:40We believe that the agencies themselves are best positioned to bring their folks on and
01:44know what kinds of vetting they actually need to do.
01:47We are very comfortable with what DCSA does with the rest of the government, but with
01:50respect to the intelligence community, because it is so variable between the agencies, it's
01:54better for them to be able to actually pick their process.
01:58Which agencies don't use NBIS and DCSA's CV program?
02:03Which are the agencies that do not?
02:04We have a, within the CV particular, continuous vetting is done by everyone, it's just done
02:13differently.
02:14We have a continuous evaluation system that we use within the intelligence community,
02:18but it uses many of the same reports and data sources that the CV does, it uses for DCSA.
02:26So there's commonalities there, it is just a different system that we run.
02:30David, do you want to?
02:32Yes, thanks.
02:33I just add from the DCSA perspective, we're managing enrollment and alert resolution for
02:373.8 million Department of Defense military, civilian, and national industrial security
02:41program contractors, but also for 44 non-DOD federal agencies.
02:47So it's a very large population that we're handling outside the IC.
02:51So is not having a sort of a single, or at least as a baseline, a single NBIS-like system
02:57for the federal government, doesn't that hamper efforts at reform and oversight?
03:03Because we're in essence dealing with all these silo-type systems.
03:07Our answer actually would be no, sir, because Trusted Workforce 2.0 is bringing in the standardization
03:12and the guidelines, so that even though we're using different investigative processes, the
03:16underlying principles behind them are the same, and what will happen with a clearance,
03:22the types of security clearances that are being granted, the types of vetting that's
03:26being done is similar across the board.
03:29When it comes to the IC, we just require more than some of the other government agencies,
03:32and so we're handling that more section.
03:35So it's really the baseline and foundation is similar, it's just the extra parts are
03:38different for what our community needs.
03:45Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

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