Dozens of young White House employees were suspended, asked to resign or placed on a remote work program due to previous marijuana use, frustrating employees who were satisfied with the Biden government’s initial indications that recreational use of cannabis would not be immediately disqualified for aspiring staff, according to three people familiar with the situation.
The policy even affected employees whose use of marijuana was exclusive to one of the 14 states – and the District of Columbia – where marijuana is legal. Origins Familiar with the matter also said that several young employees were put on probation or canned because they revealed previous marijuana use in an official document they filled out as part of the long background check for a job at the Biden White House.
In some cases, officials were informed informally by transition chiefs before formally joining the government that they would likely neglect some previous use of marijuana, only to be asked later to resign.
“There were individual calls to individually affected employees – in fact, former employees,” a former White House employee affected by the policy told the Daily Beast. “I was asked to resign.”
“Nothing was ever explained” in the calls, they added, which were led by the White House’s Director of Management and Administration, Anne Filipic. “Policies were never explained, the limit for what was excusable and what was inexcusable was never explained.”
In February, NBC News reported that the White House intended – for some candidates – to waive the requirement that all potential nominees in the Executive Office of the President be able to obtain “top secret” authorization. Rules on past marijuana use and eligibility for release vary, depending on the agency: for the FBI, an applicant cannot have used marijuana in the past three years; at the NSA, it’s just one. The White House, however, largely gives the letters, and officials at the time told NBC News that as long as the previous use was “limited” and the candidate was not seeking a position requiring security clearance, the previous use can be excused. .
Asked about the policy and its effect on management staff, a White House spokesman contested the number of affected officials, but said the Biden administration is “committed to bringing the best people to the government – especially young people whose commitment to public service can deepen in these positions,” and noted than the White House’s approach to the past, marijuana use is much more flexible than previous administrations.
“The White House policy will maintain the highest absolute standards of service in government that the president expects from his government, while recognizing the reality that state and local marijuana laws have changed significantly across the country in recent years,” he added. the spokesperson. “This decision was made after intensive consultation with career security officers and will effectively protect our national security while modernizing policies to ensure that talented and well-qualified candidates with limited use of marijuana are not prevented from serving the American people.”
A candidate’s personal drug history, except for previous convictions for possession, is largely based on the honor system, as well as supplemental interviews with family and friends by the FBI – although lying on the 136-page SF-86 form is a crime, and effectively prohibits a candidate from working for a federal agency. Over the years, some rules have been relaxed or totally eliminated (the existence of nude photos of a candidate is no longer automatically disqualifying, for example).
Some of these layoffs, probation and remote work commitments may have been potentially the result of inconsistencies that arose during the background check process, where an employee could, for example, have misinformed the last time they used marijuana. The effect of the policy, however, would be the same: the Biden White House would punish several employees for violating the limits of past cannabis use that would-be employees were unaware of.
Previous drug use can pose problems in obtaining a security clearance. Although practices across the federal government vary, in general agencies can consider the type, frequency and timeliness of the use of drugs as attenuators in granting the order.
The Biden government tried to modernize the White House’s personnel policy with regard to past marijuana use, which disproportionately affected younger nominees and those from states where marijuana has been decriminalized or legalized. (Marijuana, of course, remains illegal in the eyes of the federal government.) The number of permissible instances of past marijuana use has increased in the Trump and Obama governments – a reflection of widespread drug use – and the White House has approved limited exemptions for candidates whose positions do not require security clearance. These employees, like all those in the White House, must pledge not to use marijuana while serving in the federal government and must undergo random drug tests.
The president, however, remains the final authority on who can receive an authorization, and the chief executive can override the agency’s judgments on eligibility, as President Donald Trump did when he granted his son-in-law Jared Kushner top secret authorization. objections from the intelligence community and its own council.
“I find it absurd that, in 2021, the use of marijuana is still part of a security clearance background check,” said Tommy Vietor, a veteran of the Obama team in 2008 who subsequently served as a spokesman for the National Security Council. . “For me, the use of marijuana is completely irrelevant when you are trying to decide whether an individual should receive national security information.”
In previous administrations, White House officials have also been denied applications or jobs that began to be abruptly withdrawn because of marijuana use. In the early days of the Trump era, several people – some intermediate, some senior – had jobs they had already taken, pulled by White House chiefs after failing urine tests that showed signs of recent marijuana use, according to with a person with knowledge of the subject.
Marijuana policy has hindered the nominations of even senior White House officials in previous administrations. Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser at the Obama White House, wrote in his memoirs that his provisional security clearance was initially denied because of previous marijuana use. Alyssa Mastromonaco, who served as deputy chief of staff for operations in the Obama administration and describes herself as “love for the ganj”, wrote in Vice in 2017 that, after filling out her SF-86, “went home and flushed all the pot that I had kept in my underwear drawer. ”
In the end, Mastromonaco was allowed to join the administration, she wrote, “but I did drug tests randomly once a month for the first year, and regularly thereafter”.
But aspiring Biden government officials, whose dream jobs have been hampered by an opaque system, now feel that their own veracity has been used against them.
“It is aimed exclusively at younger employees and employees who came from states where it was legal,” said the former employee.