Botched Background Checks?

The security contractor USIS, which does $2.45 billion worth of background checks for the National Security Agency and other departments (and had cleared file-leaker Edward Snowden and the Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis), gets paid for only completed files. However, full background checks often require months of work, and at some point, reported The New York Times in September, when USIS needed cash, it would “flush” still-open files, treating them as completed, and submit them for payment — as happened with the files of Snowden and Alexis. In both cases, reported the Times, subsequent, crucial information failed to make it into the flushed files.