Contractor Who Vetted Snowden Also Cleared Navy Yard Shooter (Or, Greenwald Goes Ballistic)
Yikes. Today we learn that the same government contractor who handled the background checks for Edward Snowden also vetted Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis.
USIS, the Falls Church government contractor that handled the background check for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, said Thursday that it also vetted Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis for his secret-level clearance in 2007.
The company, which is under criminal investigation over whether it misled the government about the thoroughness of its background checks, said earlier this week that it had not handled Alexis’s case.
USIS spokesman Ray Howell said the company got new information Thursday.
“Today we were informed that in 2007, USIS conducted a background check of Aaron Alexis” for the Office of Personnel Management, Howell said in a statement. “We are contractually prohibited from retaining case information gathered as part of the background checks we conduct for OPM and therefore are unable to comment further on the nature or scope of this or any other background check.”
This news caused activist Glenn Greenwald to fly into a rage, lashing out at journalists who reported this story and accusing them of equating Snowden to a mass murderer. Apparently if you notice that the same contractor vetted both of these criminals, it’s you who’s the bad person.
In the strange mind of Glenn Greenwald, the vetting of Edward Snowden was not a “clearance failure” at all; in fact, hiring Snowden for the NSA was one of the only good things Booz Allen ever did.
Nice little tactic to keep mentioning Snowden & Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis in same breath re: clearance failures http://t.co/UxxYKfvvbn
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2013
@TimRussoCLE There is no remote way in which Snowden was a clearance failure, and he’s certainly not comparable to a mass murderer
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2013
@TimRussoCLE Hiring Snowden was one of the few good, constructive things Booz has done.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2013
@tommyxtopher @Mediaite I’ve long viewed people who bring transparency to powerful institutions as comparable to cold-blooded mass murderers
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2013
Wow, what an amazingly twisted concept of national security this guy has.
