plus 1, Backman disappointed he didn't get Mets job - CBS Sports

Backman disappointed he didn't get Mets job - CBS Sports

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 10:19 PM PST

When you're a newspaper writer, nothing ever seems to upset people quite like a headline. Throughout my career, I've been yelled about a headline countless times, only to answer time and time again, that very rarely does the person who writes the story write the headline.

But even with my newspaper background, I sometimes fall for that old trick. And a case in point is this headline from the New York Daily News ; "Wally Backman: Mets should've chosen me over Terry Collins for manager."

Oh, even before I clicked it, I knew I was going to write about how Backman had learned nothing from his exile and he was alienating himself from the new Mets regime and possibly hurting his job status, managing for the Mets' Class A affiliate in Brooklyn.

Then I read John Harper's story .

Instead of an immature Backman flying off the hook, you hear a man who thought he interviewed well and didn't get the job.

From the story:

"I really thought I won them over," Backman said by phone Friday from his home in Oregon. "I came out of each interview thinking it had gone better than the one with the Diamondbacks when I got the job there (in 2004).
"I knew what was being said (in the media), that the other guys were the favorites, but I kept looking at it, thinking I could make them see that I was the best guy for the job. I guess I didn't convince them."

Backman says he still hopes to manage the Mets one day and he isn't quoted as saying anything against Collins or the Mets. In the end, it's just a guy who hoped he would get a job he felt qualified for, and there's nothing wrong with that.

-- C. Trent Rosecrans

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U.S. strips intelligence analyst of security clearance and job but won't say why - Washington Post

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 06:58 PM PST

Eighteen months ago, John Dullahan was an intelligence analyst with a long and varied career in both the military and the classified world. Today, he is jobless and blacklisted from the federal workforce, his loyalty to the United States, he says, brought into question.

He just isn't sure why.

On St. Patrick's Day 2009, the government stripped the Irish-born Dullahan's security clearance and fired him from his job at the Defense Intelligence Agency in a manner that has no precedent at the Pentagon - invoking a national security clause that states that it would harm the interests of the United States to inform him of the accusations against him.

As a result, Dullahan, a Vietnam veteran who served at military posts around the world and as a U.N. weapons inspector in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, cannot appeal to a board of senior agency officials, as others in his position might. He is, in effect, stranded.

"This has been devastating for me," said Dullahan, 65, who became a U.S. citizen in 1973. "I am a loyal American."

Security clearances are a ticket to opportunity for hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors. But when those clearances are taken away, so is any chance of employment in the national security complex.

The reasons to revoke a security clearance can vary. Some federal workers lose them because they are found to be using illicit drugs. Others lose them when they are determined to be financially vulnerable, a situation that might make them susceptible to blackmail.

Dullahan was fired after apparently "showing deception" during three polygraphs - each time when he was asked whether he had ever spied for the Soviet Union. That, at least, is his best guess as to the reason for his termination.

"We just don't know what it was that caused DIA to do what it did," said Mark Zaid, Dullahan's attorney. "Presumably it's connected to the polygraph, but at what level we just don't know. What happened to John is extremely rare. It doesn't happen. I've had dozens, if not hundreds, of cases where people have failed their polygraph and been accused of drugs, espionage, you name it, and they have all gotten due process."

The Defense Department declined to comment on Dullahan's case but acknowledged that the procedure used against him is rare, if not unprecedented.

"As intended by Congress, this statute is only to be used in a manner consistent with the national security," the Defense Department said in a statement. "There is only one known invocation of employing this statute as a basis for termination."

But the department would not confirm that the one case in the 14 years of the statute's existence is, in fact, Dullahan's, citing privacy reasons. Typically, employees who lose their clearances and are terminated are given some explanation, which they often use to challenge the decision.