An Open Letter to President Elect Barack Obama from Concerned Foreign Service Officers. November 7, 2008   Dear Mr. President Elect,   As you have said, your electoral victory is a vindication of the idea, e pluribus unum, that we must define the American people by who we are, not where we come from. The election of an American President who, like 21 percent of all Americans, has at least one foreign-born parent, and who, like millions more Americans, has relatives who are citizens of some other country, is of enormous significance in this regard. Yet this very concept is under threat right now in the government you are about to head.   Concerned Foreign Service Officers is one of many organizations in the United States concerned about the governmental security clearance process which is used to control access to Americaʼs most important national security information. The questions "Who is an American," and by extension, "Who is a loyal American," are of huge importance to our national security concerns. How agencies answer these questions directly affects America’s ability to tap its rich resources that reflect the diversity that defines our society. Americaʼs security, intelligence, and foreign affairs agencies are hungry for speakers of foreign languages and experts on foreign cultures. Our national security interests and our future position in the world community require us to staff these agencies with the human talents they need rather than turn our back on persons who fail to fit a narrow, culturally defined and biased mold. And the greatest impediment is neither a lack of qualified candidates nor other barriers to hiring, but rather the unwillingness by security services to clear candidates who share the traits that define our national diversity. The belief that immigrants, the children of immigrants, those with foreign relatives, or those who adhere to certain faiths, cannot possibly be loyal enough to the United States or that within them lurks an automatic loyalty to the country and people they or their ancestors left behind, is a belief that belongs as far behind us as Jim Crow. Regrettably, however, the attitude is alive and both choking off the stream of talent that our agencies need and from behind closed doors is in use to "weed out" those whose greatest trespass is that they are "different."   Such an impediment is obviously not regulatory. The laws and regulations clearly allow the granting of security clearances to such people and thousands have historically received clearances and gone on to serve our country with silent and oftentimes great distinction. The impediment is a matter of intolerable attitudes, and the degree of independence and freedom from oversight which is granted to individual adjudicators, particularly in those agencies outside the OPM/DOD clearance apparatus. In the State Department, CIA, NSA and others, security clearance adjudication today is a matter of the luck of the draw. If a case is assigned to a truly objective adjudicator, a clearance may be granted. If the same case were assigned to another adjudicator, one with bias or prejudice against a certain group or against anyone whose American roots donʼt go deep enough for his/her liking, the clearance is denied or withdrawn with scant oversight and little chance for appeal. The opaque environment in which adjudicators operate in these agencies enables the concealed proliferation of biases and prejudices that our nation has outgrown and often outlawed in other settings. The results hurt rather than help the security and interests of our nation.   The Bush administration and others have devoted some attention to security clearance reform, but their efforts are aimed at improving efficiency and reciprocity rather than quality and transparency. This is rather like focusing on the receiving and patient transfer procedures of hospitals rather than the skills of their doctors. There is an urgent need to retrain adjudicators, to identify and eliminate harmful mindsets, and to increase the oversight and transparency of the investigative and adjudicative processes. The alternative would be to allow attitudes and practices you have so successfully fought against to become embedded in your presidency.   As you consider the many tasks ahead of you, and the ways in which your administration will address national security and foreign affairs issues, we urge you to devote some attention to the greatest impediment to diversity in our Foreign Service, in our intelligence agencies, and in those agencies entrusted to protect our nation from foreign terrorism and aggression. Americans of all ethnic and religious heritages want to serve our country. Please allow them to do so.   Members, Executive Committee, Concerned Foreign Service Officers