Firm that vetted leaker faces probe

Friday, January 24, 2014

WASHINGTON - The company that handled a background check on National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is accused of defrauding the government by submitting at least 665,000 investigations that had not been properly completed, and then tried to cover it up when the government suspected what was going on.

The number of investigations, the Justice Department said Wednesday in a civil complaint, amounts to 40 percent of the cases that U.S. Investigations Services Inc. sent to the government over a four-year span, continuing through at least September 2012.

The company was involved in a background investigation of Snowden in 2011, but his particular job doesn’t figure in the lawsuit.

In a statement, the company said the “allegations relate to a small group of individuals over a specific time period and are inconsistent with the strong service record we have earned since our inception in 1996.”

The government said the company engaged in a practice known inside the company as “dumping” or “flushing.” It involved releasing uncompleted background cases to the government and representing them as complete in order to increase revenue and profit.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/24/2014