Win - Win

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We disagree with Peter Van Buren about a great many things he writes (including the wisdom of writing them), but this quote from his latest posting about DS rings very true.

Begin quote:

The deal is this comrades: When an organization such as the State Department wants to deep six an employee for no allowable reason (i.e., rude blogging), they turn the case over to Security. Knowing that their own human resources regulations won’t work, never mind the sticky Constitution, the State Department in the specific and the Government in general are hiding behind security, where even accusations can become fatal, where facts can be hidden from Freedom of Information Act requests and even court-ordered discovery, and thus manipulated to a desired end. What is called an investigation morphs into an indictment, where the goal is to keep fishing until something, anything, comes up.

Worse than that (the Stasi, and Diplomatic Security, can at least hide behind the old “just doing my job, I don’t make the rules” sissy excuse) is how once the institution labels you a target, people inside turn on you with crazy accusations (see above). Diplomatic Security fanned out into every office I worked in since returning to the US in 2006 and asked for dirt. They did the same with my neighbors. The investigator today had my credit report in front of him. He asked me questions about what medical provider I see and was very interested in the names and dosages of any prescription medications I take.

End quote.

CFSO note: The real deal is this: Unlike its counterparts in most other agencies, there is no meaningful outside oversight of the DS investigative function, and few internal controls. There is no way to prevent that function from being used to "document" pre-determined outcomes, and no way to follow up on violations of DS's own rules. CFSO, AFSA, and friends in Congress have repeatedly tried to get DS to put into place the same type of internal controls that the Department of State imposes on consular and management functions (including the legislatively-mandated government-wide quality-control procedures for security clearance investigations) but DS leadership at the very highest levels - with OIG collusion - has refused. CFSO, AFSA, and friends in Congress have repeatedly tried to get DS to use the "substantial evidence standard" mandated by the Administrative Procedures Act and the government wide procedures for security clearance adjudications and DS has refused to do that as well. Nobody checks, nobody verifies, nobody cares that DS routinely fails to comply with its own 12 FAM regulations on investigations. That freedom from oversight (the quo) is the "plausible deniability factor" that allows the Department, when it wants to, to use every dirty trick imaginable to terminate - with extreme prejudice - anyone, for any reason, deserved or not (the quid). DS leadership gets the kind of absolute power that the corrupt enjoy absolutely, in exchange for using that power, when desired, to eliminate the problem employee of the day. It is, as they say, a win-win situation.