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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Woman was denied top-secret US security clearance for being a close | |
relative of dictator | |
By Haley Britzky, CNN | |
Updated: | |
5:14 PM EDT, Tue April 30, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
An unnamed woman was denied a top-secret security clearance this year | |
due to being a “close” relative of an authoritarian dictator of an | |
unnamed country, according to a publicly available document from the | |
Defense Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. | |
The administrative judge in the case ultimately decided to deny the | |
clearance in what appears to be an extraordinary case because the | |
applicant is related to “an extremely bad and dangerous person, a | |
dictator of a country that is hostile to the United States.” | |
More than 1.2 million people had top-secret security clearance as of | |
October 2017, | |
The applicant, who is not named, is in her 30s and married to an | |
American citizen born in the US, and has worked for defense contractors | |
for several years, the document says. She and her family moved to the | |
US in the 1990s when she was young and became US citizens; they are not | |
in contact with any of their family still living in the country in | |
question — referred to only as “Country X” in the document. | |
The judge said that Country X “supports international terrorism, and | |
it conducts cyberattacks and espionage against the United States.” | |
“Applicant was born a citizen of Country X,” the record says. “A | |
close family member (cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew) is the | |
dictator of Country X. Applicant’s parents and their children, | |
including Applicant, immigrated to the United States in the 1990s when | |
she was young. They all became U.S. citizens.” | |
The family all changed their names upon getting to the US, though the | |
applicant told the court her mother “still fears retaliation.” | |
The document say that the woman in question already has a secret | |
security clearance and no concerns have been raised over her handling | |
of sensitive information. | |
‘A model employee’ | |
“This is a difficult case because Applicant is intelligent, honest, | |
loyal to the United States, a model employee, and a current clearance | |
holder with no evidence of any security problems,” the administrative | |
judge on the case, Edward Loughran, wrote in the document. “She | |
credibly testified that her connections to Country X and its dictator | |
could not be used to coerce or intimidate her into revealing classified | |
information.” | |
“There is nothing about her that makes her anything less than a | |
perfect candidate for a security clearance except her family | |
connections to a dictator, Loughran said. | |
Administrative decisions on security clearance eligibility are by | |
the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals. | |
Dr. Marek Posard, a military sociologist at the RAND Corporation, told | |
CNN the information in the records suggested the person in question | |
could be from North Korea. | |
“It sounds like this is Kim Jong Un’s cousin,” Posard said. | |
“The thing is, they mention a dictator and state terrorism. Only four | |
countries are on the state terrorism list — two are involved in | |
cyber, and one is particularly retaliatory, which is the DPRK (North | |
Korea).” | |
Currently, the four countries as sponsors of state terrorism are | |
Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria. | |
The Washington post that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s aunt | |
and her three children immigrated to the US in 1998. The judge who made | |
the final decision said in the document that Country X “considers | |
people who leave their country to be traitors, and the country has | |
taken retaliatory actions against some of them.” | |
The application for clearance came to Loughran in October 2023, and the | |
case was ultimately decided in January. The records are intentionally | |
vague with details regarding the applicant and her family, as Loughran | |
notes it is “impossible to be too specific about Applicant and her | |
family without exposing her identity.” | |
Judge noted ‘undivided loyalty’ to US | |
Posard noted that the judge is “very careful not to trash the | |
applicant” in the document. Indeed, Loughran emphasized repeatedly | |
that there was no reason to question the applicant’s loyalties to the | |
US — she expressed “her undivided loyalty and allegiance to the | |
United States,” the records say. Loughran also notes that he has an | |
“extremely favorable view of Applicant as a person.” | |
“Applicant submitted letters attesting to her excellent job | |
performance and strong moral character. She is praised for her | |
trustworthiness, professionalism, reliability, and discretion in the | |
handling of national security information. She is recommended for a | |
security clearance … She is a good person who happens to be related | |
to an extremely bad and dangerous person, a dictator of a country that | |
is hostile to the United States,” Loughran wrote. | |
Posard also noted that it’s not particularly surprising that the | |
woman was previously granted secret clearance, saying circumstances may | |
have changed in the intervening period including the geopolitical | |
situation. | |
“One thing people forget is it’s not like you get the keys to the | |
kingdom,” Posard said of a secret clearance, which is the second | |
lowest level security clearance available. In October 2017, more than | |
2.8 million people had security clearances — more than 1.6 million | |
of them had confidential or secret clearance, and nearly 1.2 million | |
had access to top secret information. | |
Ultimately, Loughran declined her eligibility request for a top-secret | |
clearance on the terms that her connection to the dictator “creates a | |
potential conflict of interest and a heightened risk of foreign | |
exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, and coercion.” | |
Posard said the rejection likely has “nothing to do with this young | |
woman,” but is due to the level of risk the US is willing to accept | |
with giving her a clearance. | |
“It’s not just the risk to the individual, it’s also their | |
distant social network … Sometimes when we think about the clearance | |
process, it’s not that something is wrong with you as an individual, | |
it’s that a risk could be created through your network that could be | |
exploited in ways we don’t think about,” he said. | |
“It’s no fault of her own,” he added, “but if the DPRK wants to | |
exploit that … that’s the kind of stuff we have to be thinking | |
about ahead of time.” | |
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