Thanks for posting that JALLEN, I hadn't seen the doc. My favorite part is how it says his "false statements" had a material impact impeding the investigation into Trump/Russia collusion.

Really?! So, him doing his job talking with Ambassadors somehow impeded the unlawful appointment of a special counsel to investigate the "not crime" of a collusion that never happened? How did his false statements (mis-remembering and words twisted?) about those meetings have any impact on the crime and collusion that never happened?

Good job Dick Tracy, way to make us safe for only $13m.

For a handy reference, this is a good site:

https://www.justice.gov/sco


sco = special counsel office (Mueller)

for everyone that has been charged, the site provides a pdf download of

- criminal information
- plea agreement
- Statement of the offense


It is a primer in how to beware talking to the FBI

FBI Dir Wray would do well to proclaim that from now on all FBI interviews will be audio recorded.

adding a speculation: if these charges of 302 tampering prove out, defense attorneys may have a field day in challenging past and future cases.

If you were on a jury today, and the charge was lying to the FBI, would you automatically assume the 302 was accurate ?

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:
Good job Dick Tracy, way to make us safe for only $13m.

Yep, that waste of taxpayer money irritates me every bit as much as this witch hunt investigation. The Dem's are praying Mueller can keep this travesty going through the midterms as its about the only thing they have to run candidates on.

quote:

FBI Dir Wray would do well to proclaim that from now on all FBI interviews will be audio recorded.

That should have been standard procedure for years, and years, now!

Some feeb comes to your house, asks some questions, does not like the answers and charges you with lying to him/her.

Someone not long ago recommended that whenever dealing with law enforcement, especially feds, to always preface your statement with, "to the best of my recollection . . . . . . . "

Or has faulty memories become a federal crime now, too?

I remember form a few decades ago when my family had to deal with the FBI. They were looking for an uncle of mine who had deserted from the army.

Nothing courteous or considerate about either of the 2 of them.

Add to that, the terrified letter I got from my mother regarding the FBI investigating me. She was terrified that they were going to put me in prison. My crime? Following orders and submitting the request for a high level security clearance!

And, according to her, the 2 agents were much less than courteous and were acting like I was in deep trouble.

Or when I was notified that the draft board in my home town had filed a complaint with the feds because I had failed to register for the draft.

3, count them, THREE letters from me to the draft board explaining that I had enlisted at age 17, not required to register at that point, and had been in the army for nearly 10 years.

1st Sgt handled it. Don's know what he did, but I never heard from them again.

quote:

Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
Add to that, the terrified letter I got from my mother regarding the FBI investigating me. She was terrified that they were going to put me in prison. My crime? Following orders and submitting the request for a high level security clearance!

I’m curious: are you certain it was the FBI doing the background investigation? During the 1950s and until the establishment of the Defense Investigative Service (1972, IIRC) a BI for Army personnel would normally have been conducted by Army counterintelligence agents. It would have been very unusual for the FBI to do it unless (possibly) the clearance was for assignment to a non-Army agency. Even when the White House Communications Agency tried to recruit me in the mid-1960s I was contacted by an Army guy.

A lot of clearance investigators are actually private contractors...

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:
A lot of clearance investigators are actually private contractors...

Now, perhaps, but not decades ago.

Sigfreund is correct.

decades ago the investigators who did initial clearance checks and the periodic ones were govt personnel. It was under the Defense Investigative Service.

Now, as Strambo said, it is largely private contractors.

Having worked thru that transition, IMO, some of the private contractors are pitiful.

My final TS clearance was done by the FBI in 1974 for my job in the Marines.

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
My final TS clearance was done by the FBI in 1974 for my job in the Marines.

I'm curious how you learned which agency conducted the background investigation. Were you interviewed personally by someone who identified himself?

I wasn’t too familiar with the Department of the Navy’s operations in those days. I was under the vague impression that the Office of Naval Intelligence (later the Naval Investigative Service) handled background investigations for the Navy department, but I may be mistaken. It was a long time ago and I had very little contact with ONI/NIS personnel.

quote:

Were you interviewed personally by someone who identified himself?

I recall FBI agents ringing my doorbell when I was a kid. Probably 1980ish. They identified themselves, and were doing a background check on the guy who lived across the street who I'm assuming had a security clearance long before they came asking. He was an engineer for Mcdonnell Douglas.

Yes, an agent who contacted someone personally would obviously identify himself and his agency. In the Army in the 1970s, though, interviews of the subjects of background investigations were very rare and usually only conducted if unfavorable information was developed and needed to be explored with the individual concerned. I, for example, was personally interviewed only late in my career (late 1980s) despite having a TS clearance with SCI access long before then. Then the interviewer was a member of the Defense Investigative Service. That is why I was curious how someone in 1974 would have known who conducted his BI if he was not interviewed personally as part of its conduct.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
My final TS clearance was done by the FBI in 1974 for my job in the Marines.

I'm curious how you learned which agency conducted the background investigation. Were you interviewed personally by someone who identified himself?

I wasn’t too familiar with the Department of the Navy’s operations in those days. I was under the vague impression that the Office of Naval Intelligence (later the Naval Investigative Service) handled background investigations for the Navy department, but I may be mistaken. It was a long time ago and I had very little contact with ONI/NIS personnel.

7,1971, I needed a secret clearance after Army AIT at Ft. Bliss for 16r10 Vulcan cannon crewman.

The FBI conducted that. When I was home on leave after AIT some of the neighbors thought I must of been is some sort of big trouble as the agent showed ID ,ask a lot of questions about me and didn't mentions why they were doing that.

Based on the fact that so many people are intimately familiar with how background investigations were conducted decades ago, I’ll make one final observation.

Many, perhaps most, people that I interviewed during my counterintelligence career were like most other people I’ve known for at least the past 50+ years. They very frequently mistook me for an FBI agent despite my never mentioning the organization, and they very frequently assumed that the subject of the investigation was in some sort of trouble despite my canned spiel of “Mr. Jones is being considered for a position of trust and responsibility with the US government, and it’s by talking to people like you that we are able to determine his suitability for such a position.” (Yes, I still remember it.)

And that’s of course not surprising. When I see the level of reading comprehension in Internet discussions today, the fact that people might not correctly remember what they’re told at the start of a background investigation interview is perfectly understandable. In the era when I was conducting BIs for security clearances (and that was my job, not something I read about), a SECRET clearance could be granted on the basis of a National Agency Check (we pronounced it “nack”). It didn’t require any interviews at all or even trying to run down information that might only be recorded in the files of a local school, business, or police department. Things have changed a lot since then, but it’s probably because I did it for only a relatively short time that I haven’t confused it with what happened later.

Did the FBI conduct background investigations for Army personnel who required low-level security clearances like SECRET and below? Possibly. Those of us who were conducting them for higher level clearances (TOP SECRET access), however, never knew about it, and I must believe we might have at least stumbled across each other if we were both doing the same thing—especially as they would have had to come to check our (counterintelligence) files if the subject of the investigation was an Army member.

I periodically reminded people I used as references (family, neighbors) that if they were visited by an investigator regarding me, don't assume anything is wrong and just answer as honestly as possible.

An investigator was interviewing me once and he asked about other people who knew me at work. I said I had listed 3 or 4 coworkers on the form. He said "No, I want to talk to people you didn't list on the form". Smart guy.

I worked w a person who was very intelligent but a bit of a wild man. You never knew what he might say in formal meetings and he was extremely argumentative and egotistical. But he came up w ideas that no one else did.

Two investigators were talking to me about this person as part of his periodic review. One of them asked "Is xxx mentally stable ?"

I broke out laughing (couldn't help it). Both investigators leaned forward intently and poised their pens over their pads to take notes.
I had to explain why I laughed.

In 1955 while stationed at Nellie AFB I was ordered to get a TS clearance. The FBI sent investors to my high school, and not my neighbors. Mom was told by several people they had called and the kid living up stairs told hid mother who told my mom that they came into the classroom and called out the teacher. He came back in and told the class the Feds were checking on me. He said it’s good to have a good reputation.

In my case I knew that a BI was going to take place before I could leave Ft Bliss. I had no idea who or what agency would conduct that. I didn't see that as any big deal and never mentioned it to anyone back home.
At some point I filled out some paper work that ask for home town references among a thousand other things. I listed two well respected members of the community that knew me since a toddler. They were the people interviewed and later told me they were FBI.
I got my clearance went to Germany and never thought another thing about it.