FBI abuses security clearance to ‘purge’ conservatives, views them as ‘unworthy’ of employment: whistleblower
The FBI is abusing its security clearance process to “purge” political conservatives from the bureau, according to recent whistleblower disclosures reviewed by The Post.
The federal law enforcement agency’s Security Division has been suspending or revoking clearances for employees whose political affiliation or COVID-19 vaccination status are suspect, a supervisory special agent who formerly worked in the division alleges.
The unnamed agent, who is described as “a registered Democrat” and is represented by the nonprofit Empower Oversight, further claims that high-ranking officials in the division believed “if an FBI employee fit a certain profile as a political conservative, they were viewed as security concerns and unworthy to work at the FBI.”
In the case of Marcus Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist (SOS) suspended without pay for more than two years, the officials ignored “possibly exculpatory information” and overruled investigators who “concluded SOS Allen’s ‘Allegiance to the United States’ was not in question and that the suspension of his security clearance was not warranted.”
That decision came after Allen informed his supervisors at the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office that he did not intend to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
Empower President Tristan Leavitt revealed in a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday that the supervisory special agent has since been retaliated against for disclosing “the improper suspension and revocation of other employee’s [sic] security clearances” besides Allen’s.
The agent’s full whistleblower disclosure and retaliation complaint was also submitted by Empower to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (DOJ OIG) and Office of Professional Responsibility on June 28.
“The outcomes of clearance investigations and adjudications were often pre-determined by the Division’s acting Deputy Assistant Director and the acting Section Chief responsible for security clearance investigations and adjudications, who often overruled line staff and even dictated the wording of documents in the clearance process,” Leavitt wrote to leading members on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, as well as the Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
“Over the last few years, the FBI has used the clearance process as a means to force employees out of the FBI by inflicting severe financial distress: suspending their clearance, suspending them from duty without pay, requiring them to obtain permission to take any other job while stuck in this unpaid limbo, and delaying their final clearance adjudication indefinitely — even years,” he told House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Whistleblower Caucus chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and vice chairman Ron Wyden (R-Ore.).
The Security Division’s “acting Deputy Assistant Director,” Jeffrey Veltri, and “acting Section Chief,” Dena Perkins, reported to the Security Division’s assistant director, Jennifer Leigh Moore, who denied under oath last year that the FBI retaliated against whistleblowers.
“The FBI does not use a suspension as a punitive measure ever,” Moore said during an April 2023 transcribed interview with the House Judiciary Committee. “It is only utilized in national security matters.”
While the bureau threatened FBI employees to spill about their colleagues’ support for former President Donald Trump or hesitancy about the COVID jab, those answers were not included in the final written clearance suspensions or revocations — including for Allen.
Leavitt warned in his letter to lawmakers that “the same officials at the heart of much of this inappropriate behavior are either still leading the Division or rewarded with senior leadership positions within the FBI.”
He urged them to “independently corroborate” the whistleblower’s disclosures “and pass legislation to fix the abusive security clearance process and successfully protect future whistleblowers.”
Leavitt also told DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz that the whistleblowing supervisory special agent — who was indefinitely suspended just a year before being eligible for retirement — “should be immediately returned to duty and provided back pay and benefits for his time on unpaid leave.”
Horowitz should also broaden a recent review of the FBI’s security clearance process to investigate Perkins, Veltri and others in “FBI leadership in allowing these abuses to multiply,” he added.
“The FBI’s leadership has become weaponized from the inside out,” Grassley told The Post Tuesday. “That’s not just according to Chuck Grassley — for years, many FBI whistleblowers have disclosed the same to my office.
“The FBI’s political persecution of its own agents is an affront to justice. My oversight of Attorney General [Merrick] Garland and [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s failure to correct this improper conduct and end this scandal will continue.”
A spokeswoman for Horowitz’s office declined to comment.
The DOJ OIG had informed Empower Oversight in a June 26 letter that it welcomed information from “additional employees” about the “concerning questions that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees may have been asked.”
Allen, a former US Marine and Iraq war veteran, had an FBI security clearance probe case file that eventually numbered more than 1,700 pages.
He was flagged for sharing concerns about Wray giving potentially “untruthful” testimony to Congress about whether the bureau had confidential human sources on the ground during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“The FBI takes seriously its responsibility to FBI employees who make protected disclosures under whistleblower regulations, and we are committed to ensuring they are protected from retaliation,” a bureau said in a statement.
“The security clearance adjudication process requires multiple levels of review to ensure decisions are in compliance with applicable policies and procedures. Those policies and procedures do not allow security clearance actions to be taken for improper reasons such as an individual exercising First Amendment protected rights, to include an individual’s political or medical views, or ethnicity or any other protected class.”
