VA-07: In a deeply disturbing development, the Republican super PAC America Rising obtained a full and unredacted version of an application for federal security clearance submitted by Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA agent who is running against GOP Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th Congressional District. America Rising then shared the application, which contains extensive personal information, with another super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, which in turn provided the file to media outlets to attack Spanberger for briefly working as a substitute English teacher at a Saudi-run school 15 years ago.
The disclosure of the highly sensitive application, which includes a candidate's medical history and Social Security number, was so shocking—experts consulted by BuzzFeed called it "perhaps unprecedented"—that in a cease-and-desist letter Spanberger sent to CLF, she charged, "I am not aware of any legal way that C.L.F. could have this document."
CLF claims that it received the application as a result of a FOIA request to the United States Postal Service, where Spanberger had applied for a position as a postal inspector at the same time she sought a job at the CIA. (It was while she was waiting to hear back that she taught English—and waited tables; she then went to work for the USPS before joining the CIA.) An attorney for Spanberger questioned this claim, saying, "In this unredacted form, this is not a document that the government can provide under the Privacy Act."
However, according to BuzzFeed, the Postal Service did indeed provide America Rising with Spanberger's full security clearance application, though that most definitely does not mean it should have done so. As one expert, Bradley Moss, told BuzzFeed, if the application was disclosed negligently, "Someone at the USPS FOIA office is getting fired." Moss didn't address the even scarier prospect that the disclosure might have been intentional, but no one seems to be ruling it out, either.
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