USIS background‑check failures enabled Snowden’s clearance renewal and subsequent NSA assignment

60 after his CIA security clearance ran out, he applied to renew it. A new clearance required a new background check and filling out (again) the government’s 127-page standard form 86. Since 1996, background investigations for the NSA, like much of the computer work at the NSA, had been outsourced to a private company. It had proceeded from the effort of the Clinton Administration to cut the size of the government by privatizing tasks that could be more efficiently done by for profit companies. US Investigations Services, or USIS as it is now called, which won the contract for background checks, was initially owned by the hedge fund Carlyle Group who later sold it to another hedge fund, Providence Equity Partners. For the hedge funds, profits were the measure of success. To increase its profits from the contract with the NSA, USIS had to move more quickly in concluding background checks since it did not get paid more extensive investigation. In 2006, the government learned USIS’s background checks were often prematurely ended. In Snowden’s case, as USIS did not have access to Snowden’s CIA personnel files, it did not learn about the pending security investigation of him. Nor did it learn from the Internet that he was a disgruntled employee. So Snowden’s new clearance was approved in the summer of 2011, allowing him to continue working for Dell on secret intelligence projects. Meanwhile, in August 2011, Mills began her own blog entitled “L’s Journey.” In it, she described herself as “a world-traveling pole-dancing super hero.” By now, she was an accomplished photographer, specializing in taking self-portraits. Many of her posted pictures were provocative poses of herself in her underwear and various states of undress. She wrote: “T’ve always wanted to be splashed on the cover of magazines, with my best air-brushed look.” Her wish would be gratified two years later in way she did not anticipate. For his part, Snowden seemed happy to encourage her fantasy about being a super hero. He even gave her a Star-Trek-inspired head visor. Despite all the concerns he voiced about privacy, he did not seem to mind her provocative posts. On the contrary, he took photographs of her, telling her, at one point, that her photographs were not “sexy” enough. Snowden meanwhile got offered by Dell a new position at an NSA Kunia regional base in Hawaii. Dell, which was in the process of expanding its government consulting business, wanted him to be a system administrator on the NSA’s back-up system. The NSA needed this system before it could upgrade new security protocols that would audit suspicious activity in real time. In Hawaii, as in Japan, system administrators still worked as singletons. As Snowden had seen when working in Japan this solo work in an unaudited workplace provided an opportunity for a system administrator like himself to steal documents. So he may have also realized that as a solo system administrator in Hawaii, he would have this opportunity. In any case, on March 15, 2012, he accepted the offer. Dell agreed to pay all his relocation expenses and provide him with a housing allowance. He found a 3-bedroom house in Hawaii on-line, and arranged to move there on April 2, 2012. 1t was located at 94-1044 Eleu Street in the upper-middle class suburb of Waipahu, only a few HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020212