The bill states that prior use of cannabis is not alone grounds to deny a security clearance. Image: CapturePB/Shutterstock.com
An intelligence community authorization bill (S-4503) now pending a vote in the full Senate contains a number of provisions affecting personnel policies for employees of those agencies.
Among provisions affecting security clearances is language to bar IC agencies from denying an individual’s security clearance “based solely on the individual’s preemployment use of cannabis”; and to require those agencies “in justifying an adverse security clearance or access determination against a whistleblower, to “demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the agency would have made the same security clearance or access determination in the absence of the whistleblower’s disclosure.”
The bill also would remove a cap on compensatory damages for an employee or former employee who was “subjected to a reprisal with respect to the employee’s or former employee’s security clearance or access determination,” according to a committee report on the bill.
Other provisions include: requiring the Director of National Intelligence to report on the time it takes to onboard newly hired IC personnel and produce a plan for reducing it for agencies that have median times above 180 days; separately requiring the CIA to reduce its median time to less than 180 days; and ordering the GAO to report on polygraph practices involving IC employees and requiring the DNI to issue standards for timeliness for administering such tests for purposes of adjudicating eligibility for access to classified information and granting clearance reciprocity.
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