Panel to investigate DHS hiring, security

The House Homeland Security Committee will investigate Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hiring policies after a senior department official was arrested on charges that he used the Internet to seduce an undercover officer who he thought was a 14-year-old girl.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the committee, put Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) in charge of the investigation. Rogers is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight. 
“The arrest of DHS Deputy Press Secretary Brian J. Doyle raises serious concerns about the department’s hiring policies and, more important, its security-clearance practices,” King said.

Doyle, in speaking over the Internet with an undercover cop pretending to be a 14-year old Florida girl, revealed that he worked for the DHS, later disclosing numbers for his office phone and government-issued cell phone and using those lines, police said.

“I am concerned that DHS’s security-clearance procedures and controls on misuse of electronic equipment do not meet the standards of other national-security agencies,” King said.

Rogers’s subcommittee was scheduled to examine DHS hiring and other personnel issues, including security clearances, on May 18. Now the subcommittee will examine Doyle’s case in particular, King said.

“Mr. Doyle allegedly used a government-issued computer to provide potentially sensitive information over the Internet to a complete stranger,” King said. “Leaks of this nature are unacceptable, and we must make certain DHS has the proper controls in place to prevent something like this from ever happening again.”