A recent report by the Department of Defense found 165 government contractors with felonies, influences from foreign governments, suspicious financial dealings, and even pedophilia were given national security clearance and were able to access sensitive information.
The report obtained by NBC News on 1/24/18 revealed data from 200,000 defense contractors and how easy it was to get passed the first round of vetting, the preliminary background check, and be granted access to sensitive national security information.
Of the 200,000 defense contractors who had requested top secret national security clearance over the past three years, 486 were denied or revoked. However, that number also includes 165 applicants who slipped through the initial vetting process, some of whom continued to have access to sensitive information for years.
Of those 165 applicants, 151 had withheld information, and had their clearance revoked upon being discovered. NBC News cited an example where one person’s interim secret clearance, granted in 2015, was revoked in 2017, after it was discovered the person had raped a child before applying for clearance.
