Alleged family connections and CIA hiring waiver for Edward Snowden

48 from a fully accredited technical school or university. Snowden did not meet these standards. Lacking these qualifications, the CIA can make an exception only if a candidate had at least two years civilian or military work experience in the telecommunications and/or automated information systems field that are comparable to one of the requisite degree fields. , Even here, Snowden in no way qualified. He did not have the education qualifications or two-year work experience anywhere. In fact, his only paid work was as a security guard at a language school at the University of Maryland, and that job lasted less than one year. Under extraordinary circumstances, even the minimum requirements might be waived if the applicant had a distinguished military career and an honorable discharge. Snowden, however, did not complete his military training at Fort Benning, Georgia and received only an administrative discharge. The CIA, to be sure, had needed computer savvy recruits to service its expanding array of computer systems since 1990. By 2006, however, there was no shortage of fully-qualified applicants for IT jobs who met the CIA’s minimum standards. Most of them had university course records, work experience at IT companies, computer science training certificates from technical schools, and other such credentials they could provide the personnel office. The CIA, like the NSA, also obtained technicians with special skills for IT jobs from outside contractors. So it had no need for employing a 22-year old drop-out who did not meet its requisites. According to the former CIA station chief, the only plausible way that Snowden, with no qualifications, was allowed to jump the queue was that “he had some pull.” In 2006, Snowden was not without family connections. His grandfather, it will be recalled was Rear Admiral Barrett, who certainly was well-connected in the intelligence world. After 20 years service in the Coast Guard, Admiral Barrett joined an interagency task force in 1998, which included top executives from the CIA, FBI, and DEA. It had been set up to monitor any gaps in the US embargo on Cuba and, as one of its leaders, Barrett was in constant liaison with the CIA. Following the attack on the World Trade Center in NY in 2001, he joined the FBI as the section head of its aviation and special operations. In this capacity, he supervised the joint CIA/FBI interrogation of the prisoners in the Guantanamo base in Cuba which involved him in the rendition program for terrorist. As atop FBI executive in a liaison role with the CIA, he certainly had could have played a role in furthering his only grandson’s employment. The CIA, however, has not disclosed any information about whom, if anyone, recommended Snowden. All that is known is that in 2006 the CIA waived its minimum requirements for Snowden. However Snowden got his job at the CIA, it meant, as he pointed out from Moscow, that in 2006 his entire family was employed by the Federal government. His father Lon in 2006 was serving in the Coastguard; his mother Wendy was the administrative clerk for the Federal Court in Maryland; his sister Jessica was a research director at the Federal Judicial Center; and his namesake grandfather, Admiral Barrett, was still a top executive at the FBI. In a sense, Snowden had now entered the family business. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020200