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I pointed out in an earlier thread that back in the day, the provider of the information (an employee) bore the responsibility of verifying the clearance of the recipient (also an employee) AND the need to know. But those were the days before e-mail was widely available. Surely marking an e-mail with a (C) should not be considered adequate security! Shouldn't every classified e-mail be encrypted, with the decryption key pegged to the employee's security clearance? I will agree that such a policy would not have prevented Hillary's misdeeds, or Comey's whitewash of them. But then she couldn't have claimed...

Trump surrogates have been accused of debasing themselves by supporting The Donald. But have any sunk so low as poor Harold Ford, Jr., the Hillary surrogate who humiliated himself today on national TV? Appearing on With All Due Respect, former Dem congressman Ford, disagreed with Rudy Giuliani’s statement made earlier in the day that Hillary Clinton could not get a security clearance given FBI Director Comey’s conclusion that she acted “extremely carelessly” in the handling of classified material. When Ford claimed that if he were Attorney General, he would hire Hillary for a sensitive position involving national security, it seemed...

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff. The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later. Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is blaming an exhaustive White House vetting process for the fact that the Obama administration has not yet named a person to run the U.S. Agency for International Development. Six months into the administration's tenure without having appointed someone to the agency's top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous."

A private industry IT security firm tells Fox News that personal data stolen over the span of several high-profile U.S. cyber breaches is being indexed by China's intelligence service into a massive Facebook-like network. According to CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch, Chinese hackers are using information gained from the breaches of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as intrusions into the Anthem and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health insurance networks, to build a complete profile of federal employees in what the company calls a "Facebook of Everything." "That can now be used to embarrass you publicly and force you to...

The Secret Service has had a bad couple of years, with prostitution scandals and security gaps that have embarrassed the agency — and in one instance, had an intruder running through the White House. As part of the effort to bolster security around the President, the agency has gone on a hiring spree, bringing in fresh talent to address some of the recent failures. The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, who has reported more than a few of those failures, now reports that the rush to man the posts has resulted in agents working in sensitive areas without the proper...

How badly the Secret Service was being run You’ve got problems. You’ve got a guy jumping the White House fence, running up the steps and actually making it to the stairway that leads to the residence - with a knife on him. That’s a problem. You’ve got a drunk agent crashing into a White House barricade. You’ve got prostitutes in agents’ hotel rooms . . . yeah, you’ve got problems, Secret Service. So you get a new director. OK. You pretty much had to do that. And then you start hiring a bunch of new agents as quickly as you...

*snip* Under an executive order signed by Bush, a newly created Presidential Transition Coordinating Council will meet Wednesday to begin mapping out an orderly handoff to Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama. The McCain and Obama campaigns have already begun preparations for a possible transition. The White House said the administration has been working with representatives from both sides since the summer and has provided security clearances for key aides.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein questioned a top Homeland Security Department official Thursday on why his agency has reportedly resisted sharing information with state intelligence officers and even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's own homeland-security director. Feinstein asked Charlie Allen, the chief intelligence officer for the Homeland Security Department, about her staff's findings that the federal agency has denied state and local officials at a Sacramento intelligence-sharing facility to obtain top security clearances. Moreover, California Office of Homeland Security Director Matthew Bettenhausen is not receiving "intelligence he knows exists," Feinstein said. Bettenhausen answers to Schwarzenegger; he formerly worked for DHS in Washington. DHS, Feinstein...

Industry is cranking up the pressure on the Defense Department to resume processing applications for contractor security clearances by calling on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to immediately resolve the issue. Members of seven industry groups yesterday sent a letter urging Rumsfeld to reverse the Defense Security Services’ decision to stop accepting industry applications for all security clearances. The agency, which provides security support services to the DOD, federal government defense contractors, ceased the activity on April 28, due to a lack of funding and the high volume of applications. “We request that immediate action be taken to reverse this decision...

The Pentagon stopped processing security clearances for government contractors this week, potentially exacerbating a shortage of employees authorized to work on the government's most secret programs. The Defense Security Service blamed overwhelming demand and a budget shortfall for the halt, which caught the government contracting community by surprise. Already, 3,000 applications have been put on hold, said Cindy McGovern, a DSS spokeswoman. "We're holding them [the applications] now to see if we can resolve the issue. The more drastic step would be not accepting them" at all, McGovern said, a step the agency considered but dropped for now. The demand...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...