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Skipping the FBI Background Check
It is being reported in the media that the Trump transition team is skipping the FBI background check for nominees. Instead, they are using private investigative organizations. Naturally, there is a lot of tut-tutting among our political betters.
The concern is that the officials (e.g. FBI Director Christopher Wray) overseeing the background checks are the very ones that Trump has promised to fire. It would be tempting for them to interfere or to use the information developed against the nominees. In addition, FBI background checks are notoriously slow, so it delays the point when confirmation hearings can start and lengthens the time that the Deep States can do its Trump-proofing. It shows how broken the confirmation process is when you have to outsource the background checks.
As an aside, I once participated in a background check for one of my Chinese ESL students who had joined the Army and needed a Top Secret clearance. The student listed me a reference, and an investigator came to my house. The final question was whether I would give my former student a Top Secret clearance if it were my decision and why. I said, “No, because he has family in China who could be pressured.” The investigator told me that was not a valid reason and that I had to give an answer based only on my personal knowledge of the student. So I finally said “Yes,” but I thought that was the craziest way to make a security clearance decision.
Published in General
The fact that he has relatives in China is baked into the cake, already. He had to divulge close family in the application. If you had said he once expressed concern about his family being in China, that might have been a different discussion. Since Clinton, China has not usually been dealt with as a hostile power, and I have worked with Chinese natives in the federal environment on multiple occasions. I am not personally endorsing the policy.
That’s an interesting perspective on the clearance process. It can be jiggered to produce a desired outcome by controlling the informal context of the formal question.
Things have changed then, because one of my office mates waited for months for his clearance, and it was denied because he still had family (grandparents) in the PRC. He needed the clearance to do the work he had been hired for, so he wasn’t there much longer.
That distinction makes sense, and I hadn’t thought of it that way. My concern was based on a general knowledge of how a Confucian society works instead of anything specific that he had said.
I have to say , I am just loving Trump 2.0 . He is approaching taking power in DC just like you would approach a wild dangerous animal . With cunning ;) .
The decision is usually made by some manager with input from the security officer, and the nature of the work and the organization is a huge, huge factor. After the Nairobi embassy bombing in 1998, the swarm of foreign temporary worker at State went from being a social policy to help developing populations to forbidden and gone in the blink of an eye. Politics and credible threats change.
He reminds me of FDR. He knew he had a lot to learn the first time, and trusted people, necessarily, before he had a well-developed political theory beyond Steve Bannon and such. Steve is a warrior, but he didn’t bring 3000 nominees with him.
There are several possible downsides to not having the FBI do the background checks. One is that the FBI has more resources to do the checks, including classified information. Especially in national security positions, this is a real risk. Compromising foreign connections might not be revealed. Even having information revealed and placed in a file means that it can no longer be used as kompromat.
The second is that the Senate might demand FBI background checks instead of private ones done by the transition team itself. For overwhelmingly favorable nominees, such as Marco Rubio, this wouldn’t happen. But for a borderline nominee like Tulsi Gabbard, it might mean the difference between confirmation or rejection.
Finally, some positions like AG or SecDef require a security clearance. Normally these require a background check, but since this is established by Executive Order, the president could override the background check requirement.
I doubt that Tulsi Gabbard could receive a favorable background check handled by the current FBI.
Recently she was designated some type of national security risk. Several US air marshals had to be on any commercial flight that she was on.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/tulsi_gabbard_domestic_terrorist.html
From the above Aug 2024 article:
“Tuesday night, while self-styled Democratic nominee Kamala Harris pledged to defend ‘freedom, compassion, and the rule of law’ to cheers in Philadelphia, Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard described being tracked by teams of government agents in a surveillance regime more reminiscent of East Germany than a free country. Whistleblowing Air Marshals told Uncover DC Gabbard was singled out as a terror threat under the so-called ‘Quiet Skies’ program, and the former presidential candidate says she noticed.
“‘The whistleblowers’ account matches my experience,’ says Gabbard. ‘Everything lines up to the day.’”
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This “FBI” is incapable of commanding the respect and the trust of the American people. It simply does not exist until it has been fully sanitized. We have no real way to know how bad it is until it has been properly fully investigated and dealt with. No one will or should submit their people to the American Stasi for investigation. They are surveilling my church. They are licensed to lie to anyone at any time about anything. They have been trained to punish people for being white. If we started from zero on 1/20, it would not be too harsh.
I had a buddy who needed security clearance when we both stationed at Ft. Huachuca in the 1970s. He had a penpal in Cuba. He deliberately left a (supposedly autographed) copy of Kim Il Sung’s collection of wisdom on his desk in the barracks room we shared. He was a commie-hating libertarian entrepreneur but was obsessed with demonstrating the fecklessness of the security people. He got the clearance.
We were family friends with Robert Hanssen for several years while he was sending info to Russia. I have been questioned by the FBI for clearance checks for others and thought about how easy it would be to sabotage the innocent or conceal reasonable suspicions.
I have very little confidence in the FBI.
Smart. Also smart was not using the official transition office, which sabotaged Trump in 2016.
Another reason that there needs to be a thorough housecleaning at the entire “DOJ.”
I agree with Trump’s decision to skip the FBI background checks in most cases, but I’m pointing out that there are some risks to doing so.
Agree, but it’s not practical. The FBI has thousands and thousands of legit cases in progress. How would legit federal crime be investigated in the meantime? It has legally mandated responsibilities, so Congress would have to agree to get rid of it, which will never happen.
Instead, you need to ferret out the leaders of the cabal, get the goods on them, and punish them appropriately. Some should go to prison and others fired or forced to resign.
One small but important example that I remember reading was that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was run out of the DC office instead of the Miami office in violation of FBI protocol because the Miami SAIC had raised questions about the raid. Put the screws on the DC guy who ran the raid and get him to tell you who ordered it. Fire the guy who ordered it to be run out of DC for violating FBI protocol. Once you start making examples like this, more people will make confidential reports about wrongdoing to save their own hides. And the majority of FBI agents who are on the fence will come around to your side.
I would have said the question was “would I,” so my only answer would be “what I would, not what you could.” If the subject comes up that he is already hired, I would say I wouldn’t have hired him for a position that requires a clearance. If that attitude makes me unsuited to investigate clearance applications under their standards, fine, that isn’t my job. My duty was preserving classified information, not investigating people. Every answer I give is the most honest one I can give. I refuse to give a dishonest one. I have been investigated for clearances and I have sat down with the investigators and answered their questions about people I know. To me, that is as important as sitting on a jury. Too many people depend on it. I would hate to hear some day that a spy arrested had a clearance based on the fact nobody said he shouldn’t have one. That absolves the investigating agency. All they have to say is all 25 people we asked said they would give him a clearance.
Re Trump, all he has to say is has lost faith in their ability to do their job honestly, fairly, and competently.
There is a price to pay for the FBI politicizing its department and for congressional Democrats cheering it on.
And in late 2020 – 2021
Tolerable risks with known cabinet picks. The Democrats can’t claim a new- found interest in protecting classified after the way they behaved these last 8 years.
The DC people tied to Crossfire Hurricane.
Where to start? And where to finish, because I could write a book on this one.
Re: FBI backgrounds: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
There is another federal agency that does more and better BI’s than the FBI. It’s the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Whether or not they can be trusted in this matter I can’t say. But they would normally check security files that may still depend on the FBI. So there’s that.
There are many private investigative agencies trained, ready and equipped to do top quality BI’s. Some of them actually do the very BI’s under contract to the federal agencies charged with doing BI’s. They do have some limitations, though. As someone else earlier observed, they may not be able to access a lot of security files that would be routine for federal agencies. Also, many law enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate with private entities. Private agencies do have access to court records, and that’s a normal part of any quality background. The courts will reflect any significant run-ins with the law. A drawback that applies to everybody now is that some courts destroy all records of court cases in some period of time following case conclusion. There are also state and federal laws that limit the timeframe for events that can be reported in any background information. Generally anything – anything – that happened over seven years ago may not be reported, even if the investigator learns about it. A person can be convicted of murder, do his time, and seven years after release, the entire record might be destroyed.
To summarize, private investigative firms that are trained and equipped to conduct BI’s offer high – quality products at reasonable prices. There are limitations, but there are also workarounds for many of them. Given the alternative – the FBI – they’re the way to go. A professional background investigator, doing in-person interviews (NOT telephone interviews) will pretty much find what you need to know, in spite of whatever roadblocks are encountered.
Last (if I can contain myself), @stevefast, that person who “interviewed” you makes my blood boil. S/he didn’t take YOUR recommendation. Your recommendation against the clearance was absolutely based on your personal knowledge. S/he made up his own recommendation. If an investigator finds issues, then that makes more work for him/her. Tough patootie. That’s what you’re hired for, buster! This smacks to me of a “fill-in-the-blanks” exercise, not an investigation.
Now there’s a document that could use declassifying.