Anthrax Suspect Retained Security Clearance

An August 4 article in the Washington Post and one by National Public Radio examine how the FBI’s chief anthrax investigation subject, who recently committed suicide, could have retained a security clearance despite the ongoing investigation and documented concerns about his mental health. It is unclear, from either story, what level of security clearance, if any, the Army biowarfare scientist had.

A former FBI official commented on the shortcomings of federal security clearance investigations:

Any system will miss someone somewhere, he says. And the alternative here is to have a much higher level of scrutiny for everybody in the system…. People generally don’t want to volunteer damning information about themselves, or about others. The result, he says, is a system that will always have flaws.

Filed Under: Procedures, Adverse Actions