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Apr. 24th, 2007 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerWhite House staffers ignore basic security procedures, with no repercussions
Security practices at the White House are dangerously inadequate say current and former employees of the security office there, according to a letter sent today from the House Oversight Committee to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asking that he cooperate with the committee's investigation into the alleged security lapses.
"These security officials described a systemic breakdown in security procedures at the White House," wrote the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Among the lapses cited by the security officers, who spoke to the committee anonymously, are multiple instances of breaches being reported to the security office that were ignored and never investigated. Several of those instances allegedly involved the mishandling of SCI (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information), which is the highest level of classified information.
In one instance, a White House official reportedly left SCI material behind in a hotel room during a foreign trip with the president. The CIA did recover the highly classified material, but the security office did not investigate the incident or discipline the individual, according a security officer's account in the letter.
As some who has, in various jobs, been routinely held to a very high standard for handling of secure material, with the expectation that a serious breach of such procedures could lead to a lost job and the end of employment in my field, I am appalled.
Given that the current administration has used everything, from soldiers' lives to the secret identities of our nation's intelligence officers, for partisan political and personal ends, I am not, however, surprised.
How this president has survived this long without being impeached, I have no idea.
Security practices at the White House are dangerously inadequate say current and former employees of the security office there, according to a letter sent today from the House Oversight Committee to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asking that he cooperate with the committee's investigation into the alleged security lapses.
"These security officials described a systemic breakdown in security procedures at the White House," wrote the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Among the lapses cited by the security officers, who spoke to the committee anonymously, are multiple instances of breaches being reported to the security office that were ignored and never investigated. Several of those instances allegedly involved the mishandling of SCI (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information), which is the highest level of classified information.
In one instance, a White House official reportedly left SCI material behind in a hotel room during a foreign trip with the president. The CIA did recover the highly classified material, but the security office did not investigate the incident or discipline the individual, according a security officer's account in the letter.
As some who has, in various jobs, been routinely held to a very high standard for handling of secure material, with the expectation that a serious breach of such procedures could lead to a lost job and the end of employment in my field, I am appalled.
Given that the current administration has used everything, from soldiers' lives to the secret identities of our nation's intelligence officers, for partisan political and personal ends, I am not, however, surprised.
How this president has survived this long without being impeached, I have no idea.
