National News
Report says security background check company received $16 million in awards
February 11, 2014 posted by Steve Brownstein
The company that performs many of the federal government’s security background checks received $16 million in incentive awards even as it took shortcuts in hundreds of thousands of its reviews, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.
The report by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also said that senior management of USIS, a Falls Church, Va., company that conducts background checks for nearly half of potential U.S. government hires, received a sharp increase in bonuses “when the alleged fraud began.”
The nation’s background security process has been in the spotlight ever since USIS acknowledged it had conducted the background reviews for National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked thousands of classified documents that revealed many surveillance programs by U.S. intelligence agencies. The company also performed the background check on government contractor Aaron Alexis, who shot and killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last fall.
Last month, the Justice Department filed a complaint in a whistleblower’s lawsuit and alleged that USIS did not fully perform background checks in 40 percent of the cases it handled — or 665,000 — during a 41 / 2-year period in an effort to meet performance incentives and reduce backlogs.
An official with ties to the company who was not authorized to speak on its behalf disputed the scale of the alleged misconduct, saying the percentage of potentially fraudulent cases was closer to 10 percent.
The government suit says that USIS managers issued directives to “clear out our shelves in order to hit revenue.”
In testimony before the committee, USIS’s chief executive, Sterling Phillips, said the company only performs the background checks and does not have the authority to grant anyone a security clearance.
“We only collect and report information, and we do not even make a recommendation,” said Phillips, who took over as CEO a year ago. The authority to grant clearances “lies solely with the agency requesting the clearance.”
He said that when the company suspects fraud, “we immediately suspend that investigator and launch an investigation.”
The Democratic committee members’ report alleged that USIS hid its fraudulent activities when it was confronted by the Office of Personnel Management.
