Physicist Sues Feds Over Questionable Lost Security Clearance
A few weeks ago, we began tracking the case of Abdel Moniem Ali el-Ganayni, a nuclear physicist working for a Department of Energy contractor who lost his security clearance and then his job under questionable circumstances. El-Ganayni, a naturalized citizen who has lived in the U.S. for 27 years, was not accused of any security breaches. Rather, after his security was suspended, he was questioned by FBI agents about comments he made at a local mosque that were critical of the U.S.‘s role in Iraq. Normally, those who have their security clearance revoked get a hearing. That didn’t happen in El-Ganayni’s case.
As the Pittburgh Post-Gazette, which was the first to report on the case, explained:
The decision to revoke Dr. El-Ganayni’s clearance without holding a hearing was made by acting Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffrey F. Kupfer, a Bush administration insider who grew up in Squirrel Hill.
Mr. Kupfer certified that the appeals process set forth in [Department of Energy] regulations “cannot be made available ... without damaging the interests of national security by revealing classified information. ... I hereby terminate Mr. El-Ganayni’s access to classified information in the interests of national security.”
When we last spoke with El-Ganayni’s lawyer, he said his client was preparing to sue. That’s now happened—and The New York Times is covering it. As El-Ganayni’s lawyer told the Times:
“Our contention is that the reason the D.O.E. invoked national security here was to relieve themselves of the responsibility of having to tell us what’s going on,” said Witold Walczak, one of Dr. Ganayni’s lawyers and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.
The Times also tried to get an explanation from the Energy Department—and received the same response we did: “This is a personal security matter as to which the department has no public comment.”
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1 comments
Warren Craft
June 28, 2008, 10:45 p.m.
I find this (implied) scenario scary and depressing. More than terrorism, global warming, and our nation’s general anti-intellectualism, I find myself fearing our own government.
The use of the “national security” stamp can be oppressive, and here we have the troubling catch-22: Kupfer terminates El-Ganayni’s security clearance, and abolishes El-Ganayni’s “due process” because the appeals process itself then poses a security risk.
Moreover there is good reason to believe that the supposed “security risk” branding of El-Ganayni is due not to any overt/covert threat but instead due to El-Ganayni simply holding and sharing views critical of the government that now santions him. As reported in the ACLU press release [http://www.aclupa.org/pressroom/governmentrevokedmuslimnuc.htm, 6/26/2008]:
“During seven hours of interviews, representatives from the DOE and the FBI never questioned El-Ganayni about the possibility of security breaches or the mishandling of classified information. Rather, they questioned him about his religious beliefs, his work as an imam in the Pennsylvania prison system, his political views about the U.S. war in Iraq, and speeches he’d made in local mosques criticizing the FBI’s treatment of Muslims in Pittsburgh.”
All citizens should be worried about such actions, and about the implications of such actions being carried out through DOE and FBI representatives.
As El-Ganayni is quoted in the ACLU press release, “To realize after 28 years in the United States that I cannot share in this country’s opportunities and freedoms is devastating to me. If this can happen to an innocent U.S. citizen who had been deemed worthy of a security clearance for 18 years, it could happen to anyone.”
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