[Washington Times] The Pentagon has revised rules that will make it easier for political appointees and congressional staffers to gain access to the Defense Department’s most secret programs, raising concerns among security officials.Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks issued a memorandum to senior Pentagon officials on Sept. 20 stating that filling out a counterintelligence questionnaire is no longer required to gain access to special access programs. Known as SAPs, these are the most secret activities and programs within the department.
The eased rules specifically allow Senate-confirmed political appointees, members of the House and Senate, the professional staff of the congressional defense and intelligence oversight committees and senior White House officials access to the programs without filling out a prescreening questionnaire as required for all other officials in the Pentagon’s Special Access Security Manual: Personnel Security.
Also exempted from the prescreening questionnaire are national security advisers to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
A Pentagon official said the rule change could be "devastating" to the protection of highly sensitive programs.
Security officials "see this as a front-door or quasi-sanctioning method that will invite leaks, as previous measures affording proper protection of highly protected information are eliminated," the official said.
Special access programs are classified above the top-secret level and are reserved to protect the most sensitive information.
Hillary Clinton, a secretary of state in the Obama administration, received criticism for putting information from a special access program on her private email server, according to government documents related to a subsequent investigation. The sensitive information involved criteria to authorize drone strikes on terrorists.
I. Charles McCullough III, serving as inspector general of the intelligence committee, disclosed the compromise of this high-level information in January 2016.
Another program involved the enemy-targeting radar frequency for surface-to-air missile systems in Iraq. The information required secrecy to protect the lives of U.S. pilots.
The Pentagon defended the decision to ease the rules.