Navy Yard shootingPentagon to review security clearance procedure, military base security

On 7 August, naval police in Rhode Island interviewed Aaron Alexis after he complained about hearing voices sent by a “microwave machine.” The alarmed interviewers faxed their report to the naval police in Newport, where Alexis was working temporarily as a contractor, but the Newport police, deciding Alexis was not dangerous, took no further action.

“He’s just hearing voices,” said Lt. William Fitzgerald, a spokesman for the department. “We can’t arrest someone for that.”

The New York Times reports that the report was logged by security personnel at the Newport naval station, but was never shared with Pentagon officials who could have reevaluated Alexis’s security clearance. If his security clearance were revoked, he would not have been able to enter the Washington Navy Yard.

“In a big organization like the Navy it is never as connected as it should be, so you have reports and things that come into offices and never make it back to headquarters,” a former senior federal official who has been briefed on the investigation told the Times.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged at a news conference on Wednesday that the procedure for granting security clearances will be looked at, and probably needed fixing, telling reporters that “a lot of red flags” about Alexis’s past behavior were missed.

“Obviously, something went wrong,” Hagel said.

He announced that he had ordered a broad review of procedures at military bases around the world. “We would hope we will find some answers to how can we do it better.”

The Times notes that among the questions will be whether more personal information — even short of information on a criminal conviction — should be required, and whether security clearance reviews should be conducted more often.

That review will coincide with the Pentagon’s already-ongoing analysis of the procedures for granting security clearances, especially the common one Alexis obtained from the Navy as a condition for being hired as what his employer, an independent contractor, called a Level 1 Desktop Tech. Working with other technicians, Alexis visited half a dozen Navy bases, starting in July, upgrading computer work stations.

Two weeks after telling Rhode Island police that he was hearing voices, Alexis went to the emergency room at a veterans’ medical center in Providence, Rhode Island. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, he told a doctor only that he was having insomnia, and he was given a “small amount” of medication, which an official said was the antidepressant trazodone.

He received a refill five days later at a veterans’ medical center in Washington, saying he could not sleep because of his work schedule.

He was asked whether he was having anxiety or depression, or was thinking about hurting himself or others, but said he was not. “He was alert and oriented,” the statement said.

Human resources officials at the Experts, the company for which Alexis worked, believed that Alexis, when he described hearing voices coming through the wall, was describing actual noise from the neighboring rooms, and moved him to two different hotels in Newport.

Sources told the Times that people in the company were concerned enough to contact the Newport police after Alexis said he had spoken to officers, but the police told company officials that they had no information about Alexis.

One question being asked is why Alexis’s numerous instances of misbehavior in the Navy did not affect his security clearance. The commander of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 46, in Fort Worth, who was Alexis’s supervisor during his final duty in the Navy, sought to have him forced out of the military with a general discharge, one level below honorable discharge, which could have prevented him from gaining a security clearance.

He was overruled by his superior, an admiral, who said a series of nonviolent misbehavior Alexis committed while in uniform did not warrant a general discharge.

“Had he received a general discharge, had this pattern of behavior been made available, it wouldn’t have predicted he could be a suspect in a future mass murder, but it might have identified him as a less-than-ideal employee for access to a military installation,” one Pentagon official told the Times.

“The accumulated behavior,” the Pentagon official said, “might have raised issues of trust.”