Security Clearances Research Articles

"Not Exactly, Mr. President": Speaking Truth, Sort of, to Power

In 1979 and 1980 I worked as a full time analyst in the Near East and South Asia section of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the Department of State. As a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow I was paid from outside the government, with funds provided by the Council and by the National Endowment for the Humanities, but worked and was treated as a full-time State Department employee. Key Middle East related events during this period included the autonomy negotiations between Israel, Egypt, and the United States over the future of the Israeli occupied territories, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iran hostage crisis. I was assigned special responsibilities for monitoring, interpreting, and analyzing Israeli-Palestinian relations and internal Israeli and Palestinian politics. This was unusually appropriate. I had written my dissertation on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and had been intensely interested in the West Bank issue for more than a decade. My special expertise pertained to land expropriation, water rights, and military, legal, administrative, and political aspects of Israeli settlement activities. For much of my tenure at the State Department I was seconded to the negotiating team engaged in the post-Camp David effort to achieve an agreement between Israel and Egypt for a workable autonomy agreement for the Palestinians. With Menachem Begin serving as Prime Minister of an annexationist government in Israel, I thought that an impossible task, but one the United States government, and President Jimmy Carter, believed was worth attempting. Because of the sensitivity of the topics I was responsible for, their policy immediacy, and the senior levels to which I was required to report, I was granted special top secret and other security clearances. This dispensation was crucial because of the pecking order produced by the distribution of different kinds of security clearances. Without the proper clearances an analyst has difficulty being taken seriously. There are restrictions on contacts and conversations. Even entry into the offices of one's colleagues may be denied. Since my return to academia in the fall of 1980 I have continued a consulting relationship with the State Department and other branches of the United States Government with responsibilities for foreign affairs. Without tailoring my research to conform with agendas or tasks emanating from Washington, I have regularly been willing to reformulate and cull from ongoing research projects findings, techniques, and perspectives that have been of interest to policy-makers. Certainly the most memorable of my activities in this area was a meeting in which I was invited to participate in March 1989. The meeting (with ten people present) was held in the Oval Office of the White House. It was organized by the staff of the National Security

American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War

No professional group in the United States benefitted more from World War II than the scientific community. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists enjoyed unprecedented public visibility and political influence as a new elite whose expertise now seemed critical to America's future. But as the United States grew committed to Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and the ideology of anticommunism came to dominate American politics, scientists faced an increasingly vigorous regimen of security and loyalty clearances as well as the threat of intrusive investigations by the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities and other government bodies. This book offers a major study of American scientists' encounters with Cold War anticommunism in the decade after World War II. By examining cases of individual scientists subjected to loyalty and security investigations, the organizational response of the scientific community to political attacks, and the relationships between Cold War ideology and postwar science policy, Jessica Wang demonstrates the stifling effects of anticommunist ideology on the politics of science. She exposes the deep divisions over the Cold War within the scientific community and provides a complex story of hard choices, a community in crisis, and roads not taken.

A k -th order Carmichael key scheme for shared encryption

A generalization of a digital multisignature key scheme published by Desmedt and Frankel is presented, with increased protection from line monitors and with a high degree of privacy of message contents. The Desmedt/Frankel paper at Crypto'91 [1] presented the following shared encryption Carmichael scheme: • An RSA cryptosystem with modulus n and private key K Priv. • Separate individual keys K Priv<sub>i</sub> are generated by some unspecified process with the sole requirement that ΣK Priv<sub>i</sub> ≡ (K Priv - 1) mod λ(n), where λ(.) is the Carmichael function. • Individual signatures ("partial results") of a message m are calculated as s<sub>i</sub> ≡ m<sup>K Priv<sub>i</sub></sup> mod n. • A "Combiner" produces the final signature S from the partial results and the plain text message as S ≡ m IIs<sub>i</sub> mod n. The combiner is specified as "not necessarily trusted". Desmedt/Frankel specify that the message m is being signed, not a message digest value derived from the message. The limitation is apparently imposed to meet the requirement that it must be impossible for the combiner to substitute a different message for a given set of partial results. This requirement is met if the plain text message rather a message digest is used in the calculations. This requirement is practical only when the length of the message is less than the length of the RSA modulus. Many users would probably prefer to use the message digest rather than the message as the basis for the signature, for example as specified in the RSA Public Key Cryptographic Standards (PKCS) [2] and Internet Privacy Enhanced Mail [4]. Using the PKCS minimum modulus size of 328 bits and PKCS padding of a minimum of 11 octets limits the message size to 30 bytes. A wire tapper who intercepts the partial results sent to the Combiner will not be able to forge a signature without knowing the original message. The power of this feature depends entirely on the secrecy applied to the message inside the enterprise. If the wire tapper is able to intercept the partial values sent to the Combiner, the wire tapper will presumably be able to intercept the original message sent to the Combiner. The wire tapper will then have sufficient information to produce a signature. Forgery is more likely in the more practical case where a message digest is signed rather than a short message. If a message digest were used, it is possible (but computationally difficult) to substitute a different message which has the same message digest as the original [3], and therefore obtain a verifiable signature for a fraudulent message. For the Desmedt/Frankel system to be secure, the message must be limited to those with high security clearances. Most enterprises limit access to sensitive plain text information on a "need to know" basis. The Combiner in the Desmedt/Frankel scheme does not need to know the contents of the plain text messages to combine the partial values. Moreover, the ("not necessarily trusted") Combiner is not provided with any confidential exponent, but certainly does have access to the plain text message. Thus, the combiner may be considered as not sufficiently trustworthy to be provided with an exponent, but nevertheless does have access to the plain text document. Management may regard this as a security anomaly and wish the document to be unreadable by the Combiner. To meet this requirement, we extend the Desmedt/Frankel key scheme into what we can name a k-th order Carmichael key scheme for RSA: • An RSA cryptosystem with modulus n and private key K Priv. • Individual keys K Priv<sub>i</sub> are generated by some unspecified process with the sole specification that ΣK Priv<sub>i</sub> ≡ (K Priv - k) mod λ(n), where λ(.) is the Carmichael function. • Individual signatures of a message m are calculated as s<sub>i</sub> ≡ m<sup>K Privi</sup> mod n. • The combiner produces the final signature S as S ≡ m<sup>k</sup> IIs<sub>i</sub> mod n. Now the combiner is provided with m<sup>k</sup> mod n rather than m, and the confidentiality of the document is preserved. Using this terminology, the Desmedt/Frankel scheme is classified as a first order Carmichael key scheme.

Credibility, persuasiveness, and effectiveness.

Credibility, Persuasiveness, and Effectiveness Patricia A. King (bio) Since the early 1970s, complex ethical, social, legal, and scientific controversies generated by biomedicine have been referred to governmentally created commissions, committees, boards, and panels that are commonly referred to as “ethics” committees. The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments is the most recent example of such a group. Although it is too early to know the full impact of the Committee’s work, it is important to reflect on aspects of its deliberations that shed light on the public policy role of ethics bodies. Specifically, I will reflect on matters that go to the credibility, persuasiveness, and effectiveness of these committees. The point should be made at the outset that these ethics committees are, first and foremost, public policy groups. Governmentally created bodies of all types, including ethics committees, are established to provide pragmatic advice to governments about specific problems and controversies or to complete specified tasks on behalf of governments. What distinguishes ethics committees from other advisory groups is that the issues assigned to them are presumed to be primarily ethical, as opposed to, say, economic, in nature. It is expected that ethical analyses and premises will play a significant, albeit not exclusive, role in the committee’s deliberations. 1 As with other advisory groups, the primary responsibility of ethics committees is to respond to the branches of government that were instrumental in their creation as well as to the public at large. Since political concerns undoubtedly play a role in the creation of these groups, it is understandable that political concerns have some impact on the committee’s work. Thus, ethics committees are generally cognizant of the need to ensure that their processes and substantive conclusions are credible, persuasive, and effective. In my experience, members of ethics commissions understand the need to offer principled arguments that are factually accurate to justify their recommendations and conclusions. They also appreciate the need for consensus and rightly worry about disagreement among members. I believe, however, that committee members are less attentive than they should be to the social and political contexts in which they operate. This is not surprising. Members of these committees, and often their staffs as well, are typically experts drawn from the academy. [End Page 313] Scholars traditionally offer advice or influence policy through articles and scholarly work undertaken individually or in cooperation with like-minded individuals who do not need to be persuaded about the merits of a specific position. Moreover, scholarly articles are often pitched at a level of abstraction that may be of limited utility in the context of concrete decision making. Scholarly efforts are important. Particularly in bioethics, these scholarly efforts often have furnished the conceptual frameworks that are critical to the efforts of those who grapple with complex matters, the appropriate resolution of which pose moral disagreement and genuine perplexity. Policy formulation by its very nature, however, requires more. Attention must be paid to competing moral and social frameworks. Logical, rational arguments and risk/benefit assessments are important, but emotion, passion and values grounded in experience also demand consideration. Policy formulation as a result can be a quite messy process. Members of the academy are often uncomfortable in this environment. Pursuing the messy details can be threatening and at times at odds with values that academics prize highly. I believe this discomfort was evident in the reluctance of several Advisory Committee members to obtain security clearances that were required in order to see classified material related to the Committee’s work. Secrecy may have seemed at odds with cherished values of openness. As a result the perusal of classified materials was left to those with clearances. Fortunately, the Committee was successful in having relevant information declassified so all committee members read and deliberated about the same information. Committees needing to see more contemporaneous classified information might not be so fortunate. Ethics commission members correctly worry about disagreement. The ability to reach consensus helps to give recommendations a compelling quality. Morris Abram, chairman of the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, makes this point powerfully. He states that “a commission requires agreement that is as...

Psychological Assessment for Security Clearances, Special Access, and Sensitive Positions

This paper describes issues in the psychological assessment of individuals for security clearances, special duty, and sensitive positions. Using assessment for access to sensitive compartmented information as an example, the paper identifies, and explicates problems in criterion validity (the NEXUS issue), practical approaches to resolving these problems, selection of assessment techniques, and writing of the assessment report.

Security classification reform: The waiting agenda

Awaiting the Clinton administration and the 103rd Congress are at least two major security classification reform considerations. One concerns the overhaul of the basic policy for the security classification of information, as expressed in E.O. 12356, which, reflecting the Reagan administration's Cold War offensive, reversed the trend of the prior 30 years toward narrowing the bases and discretion for classification. Another involves personnel security clearances, a system which is in need of consolidation, streamlining, and updating. Furthermore, there is the industrial security program, which was upgraded in the final days of the Bush administration with the issuance of E.O. 12829. This “reform,” however, quickly came under criticism and may merit review by the Clinton administration and the 103rd Congress. Finally, because it has been proposed from time to time that security classification policy, or some aspect of it, might be legislated or given a statutory mandate, a checklist of considerations in this regard is included, leaving aside the constitutional issues which might be engendered and the merits of such legislation.

A model for multilevel security in computer networks

A model is presented that precisely describes the mechanism that enforces the security policy and requirements for a multilevel secure network. The mechanism attempts to ensure secure flow of information between entities assigned to different security classes in different computer systems connected to the network. The mechanism also controls the access to the network devices by the subjects (users and processes executed on behalf of the users) with different security clearances. The model integrates the notions of nondiscretionary access control and information flow control to provide a trusted network base that imposes appropriate restrictions on the flow of information among the various devices. Utilizing simple set-theoretic concepts, a procedure is given to verify the security of a network that implements the model. >

Gay people and government security clearances: A social science perspective.

Lesbian and gay male applicants routinely are denied government security clearances or are subjected to unusually lengthy and intensive investigation. This article reviews social science data relevant to the principal justifications that have been offered for this policy and presents the following conclusions: (a) Lesbians and gay men are no more likely than heterosexuals to suffer from a personality disorder or emotional stress, or to be psychologically unstable; (b) lesbians and gay men are no more likely than heterosexuals to be unduly sensitive to coercion, blackmail, or duress; (c) lesbians and gay men are no more likely than heterosexuals to be unwilling to respect or uphold laws or regulations, or to be unreliable or untrustworthy. Three major flaws are discussed that underlie current government policies toward gay applicants for security clearances: (a) Groups rather than individuals are screened for undesirable characteristics; (b) applicants are rejected on the basis of problems created by government policies themselves; and (c) homosexual applicants are scrutinized according to criteria that are not applied similarly to heterosexual applicants. An alternative hypothesis, that experience with stigma actually may increase a gay applicant's ability to maintain secrecy, is discussed. Finally, some consequences of current policies are noted.

Gay people and government security clearances: A social science perspective.

Gay people and government security clearances: A social science perspective.

A unified approach for multilevel database security based on inference engines

A multilevel relational database system handles data at different security classifications and provides access to users with different security clearances. Many methods for enforcing security in this environment have been investigated. This paper presents a unified approach to multilevel database security based on two ideas: a trusted filter and an inference engine. These two approaches are introduced separately and then the motivation for the unified system and the system model itself are presented.

Biographical constructs for predicting employee suitability.

The use of background investigation data in personnel screening is reviewed. Background investigations are routinely conducted on persons seeking positions of trust in law enforcement, the nuclear power industry, and military and civilian occupations requiring government-issued security clearances. The application of background investigation information in personnel screening differs in many important ways from biodata applications developed by psychologists. In this article, these differences are reviewed, and the construct and criterion-related validity of a survey-based measure are examined. This measure taps content domains typically explored in background investigations. Seven background factors were identified. The background scales showed acceptable reliability, informative interscale relationships, and useful levels of criterion-related validity. Using background data as a predictor of human performance has a long history in psychology (Owens, 1976). Use of background data is based on the premise that an individual's past behavior and experiences are useful predictors of future behavior and experiences. The results of hundreds of studies have shown background data to be an effective predictor for a variety of human performance domains (for reviews, see Asher, 1972; Owens, 1976; Reilly & Chao, 1982). Although data from background investigations are routinely used for screening applicants for positions of trust, background investigation data have received little attention from personnel psychologists (Lipman, 1988; Overman, 1988). In this paper I review the differences between background investigations and the type of biodata applications (hereafter called biodata inventories) that are more familiar to personnel psychologists. Then, using a survey instrument that measures content domains typically explored in background investigations, I evaluate the construct and criterion-related validity of the background domains. The first difference between biodata inventories and background investigations is the type of occupation for which screening is conducted. Biodata inventories have been used to screen applicants for a diverse set of occupations, including taxicab drivers, secretaries, airplane pilots, and managers. In contrast, background investigation data are primarily used when screening personnel for positions of trust in which integ

Worlds in collision, worlds in collusion: The uneasy relationship between the counterterrorism policy community and the academic community∗

Abstract This paper explores the tension and barriers to cooperation between the government and academic communities in policy‐relevant areas. In the field of political terrorism, the time urgency of dealing with violence or the threat of violence characterizes the government professional's approach, while the academic views terrorism with a long‐range perspective. Other differences in missions, role requirements, and attitudes within the two communities contribute to the gap between them. Exchanges of personnel, ongoing programs for the exchange of information, and increasing the number of academic advisors with security clearances are among the recommendations for narrowing the gap.

New science adviser is from a different mold

Can a former machinist in his family's furniture factory make a mark as science adviser to a President? Los Alamos physicist George A. Jay Keyworth, with roots in the chair city of Gardner, Mass., obviously thinks he can. He tells C&EN that he will be coming to his new Washington post not necessarily with confidence but with an enthusiastic humility about facing new sets of challenges. Keyworth arrived in Washington last week as a consultant to the White House, awaiting the usual security clearances that precede official nomination before the Senate. His confirmation is assured because the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that will hear his testimony is Harrison Schmitt (R.-N.M.). Schmitt as much as anyone was responsible for putting Keyworth's name before the White House. And when in April Keyworth met with top White House staffers, they were impressed and the rumors of his impending appointment raced around Washington. The naming of Keyworth—who is ...

Alphabet Soup: Getting a Grip on the Federal Bureaucracy

Success in seeking federal employment is as demanding and time-consuming, albeit not as intellectually challenging, as ethnographic fieldwork. The time duration from start to finish, anywhere from six to twelve months on the average, is similar. The process can take considerably longer when security clearances are required before one comes "on board," as is usually the case for overseas assignments. Background research is as essential for the job search as for the dissertation.

Security clearances and confidentiality: another view.

Security clearances and confidentiality: another view.

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"

Long Arm of "Security Clearances"