Whew. Thunderstorms rolled through the Piedmont this morning, announcing their arrival with brilliant flashes of light, followed in a few seconds by insistent sharp blasts of thunder. There was no point in attempting to stay under the eiderdown, and moderately caffeinated, we began our Sunday.
We have talked about the Press Conference last week. Socotra House editorial experts were relieved the President made it through it, and commended him for his fortitude. Some of The Board acknowledged the accomplishment, but agreed with Marlow that what emerged was a picture of a man- I think that is still a permitted term- who is not up to the full demand of the office he holds. There is such a swirl of events behind all this that it is clear Mr. Biden only has a passing acquaintance with them. Please don’t take that as criticism of a man clearly striving to appear fit. It just adds to the surreal atmosphere in which we live.
It being a literary Sunday under the showers, we were going to explain what is happening with the Mac Showers biography, and the roll out of his account of the establishment of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court. The times then and now have a sort of eerie commonality. It was fun to hear it from a participant in the Watergate wreckage reconstruction, but a nudge from alert readers brought something else old back into sharp focus.
A new law (House Resolution 353) has been introduced to fix the clear bias in the process that grants security clearances to those who serve or do business with the Federal Government. If you are not one of those, bless you. Those of us who were, this will be interesting. The process know starts with the dread solemnity of the Standard Form 86 (SF-86). That is the detailed questionnaire one fills out to start the process. I think I have done eight or nine of them, at five year intervals. They are not as intrusive as a urinalysis or a polygraph, but they are part of the same process.
You have to swear the truth of your answers, and the form is used to guide Federal investigators (often contractors) through the nooks and crannies of our lives to determine our suitability for secrets.
It is a routine process, and detailed, in that those who submit an SF-86 also agree to permit the investigators to interview acquittances and personal references. It is hardly a flawless system, and I am not claiming some sort of victim status for all who fill out the form. I still have one floating around out there, since the SF is just the entry point into a bewildering series of further checks, investigations and permissions that permit deeper access to the world of secrets. So, this is a personal issue for a lot of people. And imagine this as law:
Summary: H.R.353 — 117th Congress (2021-2022)
All Information (Except Text)
There is one summary for H.R.353. Bill summaries are authored by CRS.
Shown Here:
Introduced in House (01/19/2021)
Security Clearance Improvement Act of 2021
This bill requires the Office of Personnel Management to revise Standard Form 86 (Questionnaire for National Security Positions) to specifically include questions regarding an individual’s (1) affiliation with organizations or movements that spread conspiracy theories and false information about the U.S. government, and (2) participation in the activities that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or in similar activities.
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That is the short version, but it is interesting. Socotra House has a history of recommending avoidance of Washington DC on 06 January, 2021. That warning was censored by Google, who apparently determined that the simple mention of the date and the existence of a possible demonstration were violations of public order. The Staff, having been through the same summer of city burnings as you, were only slightly bemused by it all. There was clearly unrest in the streets, and most of it was clearly attributable to groups opposed to what they claimed was “police violence.”
There is no support for violence by anybody at Socotra House, but Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida’s 7th District introduced HR-353 in the same spirit as New York’s Rep. Jerry Nadler, who famously declared “Antifa is a myth.”
Given the enormous and near mythologic aspect of the Corona Virus panic last year, this sort of intellectual inversion is now common. Some things- even lives- are said to matter while others apparently are not. I am just glad I no longer have to fill out any forms. This transformation stuff seems to have a mind of its own, and I don’t want to have to justify anything to it.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com