Thursday, May 18, 2006

Stephen Cambone Tries To Beat The Check

Last year the Pentagon, which had totally screwed up the process for issuing national security clearances, decided to outsource the job to the Office Of Personnel Management. A cost plus contract was signed which would pay the OPM a 25% mark-up. (Jesus, even other governmental agencies rip off the Pentagon).

Last month though, OPM stopped issuing clearances. The reason? Stephen Cambone, who one active duty three-star general once said, "If we were being overrun by the enemy and I had only one bullet left, I’d use it on Cambone," balked at paying $40 million worth of bills, or roughly 4% of the Pentagon's daily budget. So, for the last month no nation security clearance have been issued. Of course when this became public yesterday, the Pentagon came up with enough dough to restart "Secret" level clearances, known within security circles as holy water clearances because you might as well just throw holy water of the subject and hope for the best.

Is there anything Cambone can do right? A vote for republicans is definitely a vote against national security.

Found via TPM Muckraker, which by the way, is doing some of the finest investigative stuff out there right now.

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