[rmxt]

Says the person linking to "informationliberation dot com". Pot, meet kettle.

Sure her twitter profile is highly politically charged and should likely have made her unfit for clearance, but citing that as evidence that she should be institutionalized is ridiculous. She'd likely say the same about you given your proclivity for "informationliberation". Where does that leave us for discourse?

[VLM]

Have either of you been thru clearance? I have. They're really excited to know if you can be bribed with drugs or sex or simple money. If you have the politics of a typical college professor they're not terribly interested. The clearance process was mostly CYA, was this candidate dumb enough to say he'd sell secrets to the soviets for weed or cash to pay loansharks or kinky sex?

I've read this woman's weird social media profiles. What a nutcase. The systemic failure was in her direct superior not discussing some red flags that would be noteworthy at any other organization with HR and/or the police. Her boss is supposed to be having an awkward conversation with HR beginning with "So I've got this direct report, and in public she hates the CEO. And she's intensely racist, everything with her is all about race race race, and btw she bitterly hates the CEO's race, although she likes some other races. So she hates the race of some coworkers including the big guy, and she likes the race of other coworkers, and says this all in public which must be very intimidating to her coworkers. And she hates a couple entire countries include some that we have coworkers from which must be very awkward in the office. And she tweets out parodies making fun of the CEO, in public. And she denies and parodies the CEOs policies, and denies the CEO is the legitimate leader of the company, which makes me think shes not going to react rationally at all, if the CEO or anyone else in the chain of command disciplines or fires her, we're going to need security if not cops present. And she identifies her own race as being terrorists, which in an era of workplace violence frankly scares me, and she does this in public so her coworkers see her identify herself as terrorism race or whatever violent idiocy, and we're making an incredibly hostile workplace for every coworker who's not suicidal or martyr complex. She believes she's about to die from climate change or some nonsense, the specifics don't matter, which is super terrifying in the context of self identifying as being a terrorist, making me scared she's going to strike first perhaps. So, HR person, do we wait for her to go postal and shoot the entire office, or is there some kind of employee assistance plan for mental illness I mean if this can all be fixed with some pills she seems otherwise OK, or can we call security and fire her WRT the whole workplace violence thing combined with her bitter racism toward coworkers or the ethnic thing where she hates certain countries that we have coworkers in/from or ..."

[logfromblammo]

I could probably be bribed with a comprehensive family health insurance plan, with no deductibles and low co-pays. Just putting that out there.

A simple cash bribe is a nice gesture, obviously, but really, you'd just be bribing my spouse or my kids. That's why I don't like getting cash or gift cards as birthday gifts. I appreciate the thought, but you know that's just going to get spent on electricity for the house, or a replacement AC compressor, or a tank of gas. A good gift is something that person, specifically, would want, but probably couldn't justify slipping it into the family budget.

So yeah, bribing me with the same kind of health plan that I got a taste of once, and then never saw again, would be so much more effective than a briefcase full of cash. A defined-benefit retirement plan might work, too.

But that works both ways. If my [loyal] employer were to bribe me in that fashion, I'd be nigh-unflippable. ...unless the ethics reporting hotline was useless and career suicide, I guess.

So I wouldn't say the systemic failure is in not recognizing warning signs and raising red flags. It's because so many decent people just don't want to work for certain parts of the government any more. That leads to lowered standards, just to meet staffing requirements. And then everyone has to get "insider threat" briefings all the time. Decent people want decent job conditions, including pay commensurate with the private sector, and benefits sufficient to raise 2.1 kids in a solidly middle-class lifestyle. Sane people don't want to work for paranoid employers. Stable people don't want to worry about going bankrupt from a medical emergency. Reliable people want to be able to plan out career and retirement. And above all, honorable people don't want to turn on their own neighbors.

[jessaustin]

How likely is it that an employee like the one you describe could have been selected specifically to burn Intercept? After all TFA is published in the official CIA press organ.

Still, Intercept should try to do better.

[vultour]

He never said he was fit for a top secret clearance. Her Twitter profile should've been an instant disqualification from any sort of security clearance.

[rmxt]

Nor did I say that the poster here was fit or unfit. I speculated about what two extreme opinion holders would say to one another.

My point was that polarizing the discourse and reducing the other side to "just came out of the psych ward" does absolutely nothing to further reasonable arguments.

[jpindar]

Yeah, she shouldn't have had a clearance, but if anyone thinks her posts are particularly unusual, they haven't been following politics on Twitter this spring.