Congress Introduces the Security Clearance Review Act

In an effort to ensure the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) security clearance vetting process for political appointees remains based on established national security adjudicative guidelines and is not abused by executive power, House representatives introduced legislation called the Security Clearance Review Act. If passed, it would require political appointees to be vetted by the FBI, who would make the determinations on whether someone is granted eligibility for access to classified information. If the FBI were to deny or revoke clearance eligibility and the President sought to overrule the decision, it would require the President to submit justification in writing to the House and Senate Intelligence, Oversight and Judiciary Committees on why they overruled it.

This is the latest attempt by members of Congress to ensure the integrity of the security clearance process for political appointees and the protection of highly sensitive classified intelligence information. It also would protect current clearance holders against political retaliation by preventing the ability of the President to arbitrarily revoke their access without justification. What prompted this legislation are reports that the President-elect plans on by-passing use of the FBI for vetting his appointees, and instead, using a private background investigation firm. The only problem with that is that there still needs to be a U.S. Government entity to make the adjudicative determination in granted security clearance eligibility, and it would be unlikely that the FBI would take a private firm’s background investigation into consideration which would probably not meet national security investigation standards.