CONGRESSWOMAN JACKSON LEE TO INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO LIMIT USE OF CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS TO CONDUCT SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING ACTIVITIES

Washington, DC - Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Senior Member of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committee, released the following statement regarding the disclosure of classified information revealing the existence of an NSA program to collect call records data on millions of Verizon customers:

“The disclosure of leaked and highly sensitive classified information to the Washington Post and the Guardian raises several very important and disturbing issues. How is possible that a twenty-something high-school dropout and part-time security guard can be hired by the CIA and the NSA and given, or able to gain, access to some of the government’s most sensitive and secret information? Obviously, something went very wrong in the conduct of this individual’s security clearance background investigation, which is troubling enough in itself but particularly alarming given that more than 3 million persons hold similar top secret security clearances.

That is why I am offering an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 requiring the Secretary of Defense to conduct a study to ascertain the extent to which contractors are used in the conduct of intelligence activities and the type of information to which such contractors are exposed or have access. My amendment also requires the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress on or before December 2013 a report containing the results of the study and a plan for reducing by 25 percent the number of contractors to the Department of Defense with top secret security clearances that are engaged in intelligence activities (including intelligence analysis) by December 2014.        

“Congress must hold oversight hearings to identify and repair deficiencies in the security clearance system. At the same time, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community should be review its internal processes and procedures to assess vulnerabilities in the current system, which by the way relies too much on the use of outside contractors in intelligence gathering.

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Congresswoman Jackson Lee is a Democrat from Texas’s 18th Congressional District. She is a senior member of the House Committees on Judiciary and Homeland Security and is Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security