FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. DOHA, it’s not just a city in Qatar. The Defense office of hearings and appeals has myriad responsibilities, but contributor William Loveridge takes us straight to the heart of the matter: “Although its responsibilities are varied, the one that is most important to members of industry who work with DoD is the personnel security clearance hearings and appeals process.”
2. Hiring, firing, moving, acquiring. Contributor Jillian Hamilton is a poet, but she didn’t know it . . . and her weekly “Recruiting Round-up” reads like a Petrarchan love sonnet: “Skills are necessary, but highly skilled individuals with bad attitudes are definitely a major drain on overall team efficiency and effectiveness. Learn how to interview for attitude. It takes a lot of questions and listening for answers and spotting trends. Again, it’s all about the attitude.” Who’s Petrarch?
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. In Syria, Gas! Gas! Gas! again. Has Syria crossed Obama’s red line? American.Aljazeera.Com among many others, reports, “The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss an alleged deadly gas attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces that activists say killed hundreds of Syrians. If confirmed, the attack would be the worst reported use of chemical arms in the two-year-old civil war, and would cross what President Barack Obama has called a ‘red line.’ . . . The United States and other Western and regional countries called for U.N. chemical weapons investigators – who arrived in Damascus just three days ago – to be urgently dispatched to the scene of what appears to be one of the deadliest incidents of Syria’s war.”
2. Throwing gas on the fire, Egypt releases Mubarak. World.Time.Com’s Jared Maslin reports, “An Egyptian court ordered deposed President Hosni Mubarak released from prison on Wednesday, further deepening the sense of crisis one week after the country’s military-backed interim government carried out what human rights advocates say was the worst single episode of extrajudicial killing in the country’s modern history. . . . His release from prison, however, would be seen by many Egyptians as another sign that the achievements of the 2011 uprising were being scaled back.”
3. Just don’t take our Skype. DoD fights to protect the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation program from sequestration’s bite. American Forces Press Service’s Donna Miles reports that “Military fitness centers, swimming pools, lodging facilities and outdoor recreation offices might sound to some like a footnote among competing budget requirements. But Ed Miles, DOD’s MWR policy director, and his counterparts across the military services see a close connection to military readiness. . . . Volunteers, long the backbone of many MWR services and programs, are putting in more time in fitness centers, family support centers and libraries as well as on intramural fields to cover personnel shortfalls.”
4. AFRICOM’s latest terror operative in southern Algeria and northern Mali: Mohamed Lahbous. LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “The US State Department added an operative from the al Qaeda-linked Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) who is involved in kidnapping, weapons smuggling, and armed attacks to its list of global terrorists. Mohamed Lahbous was designated today by the State Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. He is the third member of the terror group to be added since MUJAO was listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group on Dec. 7, 2012.”
5. In Ghana, SecNav Ray Mabus visits school kids and dignitaries. The SecNav’s PAO reports, “Mabus met with President John Dramani Mahama, Minister of Defense Mark Owen Woyongo, Chief of Defense Staff Vice Adm. Mathew Quashie and Chief of the Naval Staff Rear Adm. Geoffrey Mawuli Biekro. . . . Mabus’ visit represents a continuation of the Department of the Navy’s focus on building partnerships designed to help distribute the burden of securing the global maritime domain based on alliances, shared values and mutual trust.”
6. Drones just aren’t that sexy. The US Air Force cannot scrounge enough volunteers to fly their unmanned aerial vehicles. DefenseNews.Com reports from Washington, “The US Air Force is unable to keep up with a growing demand for pilots capable of operating drones, partly due to a shortage of volunteers, according to a new study. Despite the importance placed on the burgeoning robotic fleet, drone operators face a lack of opportunities for promotion to higher ranks, and the military has failed to identify and cultivate this new category of aviators . . . .”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Women Contractors – The Army’s valuable resource pool. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “In panels on how contracts can be won by small businesses qualified for set-asides under newly expanded thresholds for contract size, Tracey Pinson, a small business specialist at the Army Department, said the Army had awarded 4.5 percent of its contracts to women-owned small businesses, totaling $4 billion. While awaiting revisions in the Federal Acquisition Regulation extending the program to larger contracts, Pinson’s team has been ‘educating its buying commands’ on the value of female-owned product and service providers.”
2. Amazon.Com takes on the CIA to protect Amazon’s $600 million cloud contract. FederalTimes.Com’s Nicole Blake Johnson reports, “Federal court documents released Tuesday show that Amazon Web Services wants a permanent injunction to stop the CIA from recompeting a $600 million cloud computing contract, a move the company claims is ‘exceedingly overbroad’ and sure to cause it economic harm. . . . IBM protested the contract with the Government Accountability Office, and in June GAO ruled that it agreed with some of IBM’s complaints, including the CIA’s failure to evaluate pricing for both vendors fairly.”
3. When it comes to security clearances, DoD will decide. FederalTimes.Com’s Sean Reilly explains, “In the 7-3 decision released Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that only DoD has the expertise to decide who is a potential security risk. ‘It is naïve to suppose that employees without direct access to already classified information cannot affect national security,’ the majority wrote in rejecting attempts by two Defense employees to take their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Thirty-five, you can be out in seven. Manning gets his punishment and takes it like a, well . . . he gets his punishment. AP’s David Dishneau and Pauline Jelinek report from Fort Meade, “Army Pfc. Bradley Manning stood at attention in his crisp dress uniform Wednesday and learned the price he will pay for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets: up to 35 years in prison, the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking to the media. . . . With good behavior and credit for the more than three years he has been held, Manning could be out in as little as seven years . . . . The soldier was also demoted and will be dishonorably discharged.” TheDailyBeast.Com’s Alexa O’Brien reported, “Bradley Manning was in a surprisingly ‘cheerful mood’ . . . . ‘This is just a stage in my life. I am moving forward. I will recover from this.” [And, maybe, someday, even get a job at McDonald’s if they’ll excuse the dishonorable discharge.]
2. See, we broke the law, then we stopped, and then we broke it again, and then we stopped some more . . . the NSA. Reuters’ reports what is no longer really news – the NSA’s literal Catch-22: it defends the Constitution by ignoring the Constitution. . . “The officials revealed the documents as part of an effort to explain how the NSA spotted, and then fixed, technical problems which led to the inadvertent collection of emails of American citizens without warrants. . . . domestic emails were collected in the execution of a program designed to target the emails of foreign terrorism suspects.” AP reporters Kimberly Dozier and Stephen Braun’s take: “The National Security Agency declassified three secret court opinions Wednesday showing how in one of its surveillance programs it scooped up as many as 56,000 emails and other communications by Americans not connected to terrorism annually over three years, revealed the error to the court – which ruled its actions unconstitutional – and then fixed the problem. . . . ‘a light bulb went on.’” [Unfortunately, the bulb quickly blinked back off.]
