Govt. Agency That Oversees Nuclear Labs Fails to Revoke Former Employees’ Security Clearance

The government agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear laboratories and the highly classified material they house often does not revoke the security clearance of employees and contractors after they leave, potentially compromising national security. The failure involves the Department of Energy (DOE), which issues the authorization via Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards that serve as entry badges indicating the level of access to classified matter or special nuclear material. PIV cards also allow employees to enter, occupy or leave DOE sites and facilities. During a three-year period more than 10,000 federal and contract workers left the DOE through retirement, resignation, removal, or death, according to a recently released DOE Inspector General report. Among them were thousands of individuals with security clearances and an alarmingly high percentage of their PIVs were not properly cancelled. In thousands of other cases the names of separated federal and contract workers did not even match records in the government database. “If clearances and PIV cards are not properly terminated, recovered, and destroyed, former employees may gain unauthorized access to department buildings or information,” the DOE watchdog writes in the lengthy document. “This risk has been demonstrated by incidents at the Department and other federal agencies in which former employees have accessed facilities or systems using unrecovered badges.”-- More...