Intelligence Database Worker Illegally Looked Up Edward Snowden, Others Hundreds of Times
Investigators found 636 Privacy Act violations, as well as possible crimes and conflicts of interest related to outside jobs.
By Steven Nelson, Staff Writer | June 21, 2017, at 4:24 p.m.
A man impersonates President Barack Obama during a 2014 protest in Washington, D.C. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY)
A senior security database program officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had at least 14 freelance jobs, performed hundreds of illegal searches and admitted to spending approximately “all day” on Facebook.
The findings are contained in a heavily redacted 32-page report compiled in late 2014 by the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community and made public Wednesday by Buzzfeed journalist Jason Leopold.
The document's header says it was approved for release in December, but Leopold, a prolific Freedom of Information Act litigant, said on Twitter he had just acquired it. “These reports are rarely released,” he wrote.
The senior employee’s astounding list of alleged misdeeds was uncovered, the report says, after the CIA’s clearance division found evidence in 2012 that she “engaged in unreported outside activities.”
The woman, whose name was redacted, began work at the ODNI’s Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive in May 2010. She was hired at the GS-14 level, which then carried a salary of more than $84,000.
Her job allowed “unfettered access” to the Scattered Castles database monitoring accesses to Sensitive Compartmented Information, the report says, and her job duties included managing the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) Database.
Through her outside jobs, she had accounts with the Joint Personnel Adjudication System (JPAS) database of security clearance eligibility determinations.
The IG report says she used her access to Scattered Castles on at least one occasion as part of her outside work and that she used JPAS hundreds of times while at her full-time job to make illegal or improper searches.
"Between June 10, 2013 and July 2, 2013, [the employee] ran JPAS record searches for Edward Snowden 357 times under three of her accounts [with outside contractors] while at ODNI facilities during duty hours," the report says. "In the case of 357 unauthorized JPAS queries, [she] violated the Privacy Act."
The JPAS system warns users they may face criminal Privacy Act penalties, the report says, and "regarding only maintenance of records and JPAS queries mentioned above, [the employee] violated the Privacy Act 636 times while at an ODNI facility."
She allegedly searched her own name 442 times while at work, which is "explicitly forbidden in the manuals for JPAS."
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case, nor did the inspector general's office that compiled the report.
It's unclear if the woman remains an ODNI employee or if she faces criminal charges.
Though the woman's alleged misconduct appears not to be directly related to the government's vast pools of intercepted phone and internet records, the misconduct comes to light as U.S. officials and hawkish lawmakers push to make Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permanent. A key selling point for making that surveillance authority, which expires later this year, permanent is the professionalism of the intelligence community and the lack of intentional misuse of records.
“When you hear politicians say [the NSA, the CIA and the FBI] never ‘willfully’ abuse their access, remember just one employee did it 600 times,” Snowden tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
The discovery of the ODNI worker's alleged misconduct began with her freelancing work.
Authorities found the employee had 14 part-time security consulting jobs, as indicated by a search of her personal email. She initially reported only five, and after the investigation began acknowledged 10 outside employers. Investigators found she “averaged in excess of five hours per day” on personal or unofficial business.
The report says a search warrant was issued for her LinkedIn account in March 2014, finding the account was used to solicit outside work.
In addition to concerns that unreported outside work with intelligence community contractors presented conflicts of interest, the report says that some of the companies she worked for “did not send tax documentation, raising suspicion in regard to tax fraud.”
The woman claimed bias as the investigation unfolded and allegedly told a CIA employee that "everybody" searches their own records.
As the investigation deepened, the woman was found to have downloaded "several unauthorized executable files (programs) including game programs" at work.
"When confronted with the issue of illegal executables, games, and inappropriate chats on her account during the interview, [she] admitted that she spends approximately 'all day' on Facebook and plays games at work from four to six hours per day," the report says. "She also admitted that she engaged in sexually explicit Sametimes with a contractor for the first year of her employment with ODNI."
The report recommended “appropriate action to discipline [the employee] and ensure appropriate security clearance and access reviews occur.“
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