According to the report, DOD contractors preserved their ability to access sensitive government information despite prior criminal records and other illicit past activity that the Pentagon’s vetting process failed to detect.
"Of those 165 cases, 151 people had pre-existing issues that they did not disclose and were not discovered during initial checks; the issues were not identified until the investigation was completed [in 2017]," noted the report, adding, "The interim decisions analyzed ... actually occurred before 2017 and were subject to a final decision by the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA) in 2017."
In other words, the Pentagon subjected the contractors to the first round of vetting under former President Barack Obama and the Trump administration discovered their deception last year.