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Complete text of the article (C) 2011 Washington Post, follows.
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Intelligence agency reaches settlement with fired analyst
Vietnam vet’s security clearance was pulled without explanation
By Peter Finn, Tuesday, November 22,2:17 PM
The Defense Intelligence Agency has reached a settlement with a former analyst who was fired but never told why.
John Dullahan, a 66-year-old Vietnam War veteran and career Army officer, was stripped of his security clearance in 2009. Under a national security clause invoked by the Pentagon, he could not be provided with information on the accusations that led to his termination, or attempt to contest the move under the normal appeals process.
Now, as part of a settlement, Dullahan will receive all back pay and benefits from the date of his termination, as well as $25,000 and attorney’s fees, according to his attorney, Mark Zaid. Dullahan will formally retire from the DIA at the end of the month.
The settlement does not restore Dullahan’s security clearance.
“I’m grateful for half-measures,” said Dullahan, who was born in Ireland and became a U.S. citizen in 1973. “I wanted my job back. I wanted my name cleared. And I will continue to fight this slander.”
Dullahan has arranged to apply for a security clearance through a contractor, and if he is denied, he will probably sue, his attorney said.
Dullahan was fired after apparently failing three polygraph tests — each time, he believes, when he was asked whether he had ever spied for the Soviet Union. He can’t be sure because the Pentagon said it would damage national security to provide a reason for Dullahan’s firing, the first time in at least 15 years that it had used that provision of the law.
Dullahan denies any wrongdoing and believes he may have failed because of nervousness during the unusually stringent polygraph tests, which brought up an earlier, dismissed allegation of disloyalty.
In the 1980s, Dullahan served several tours in the Middle East as part of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, a multinational mission that included Soviet officers. At the time, he was accused of inappropriate contact with the Soviets after he socialized with them on a couple of occasions. The charge was dismissed, but Dullahan’s wife, also a DIA official, believes that he was scarred by the experience and that the memory of it affected his polygraphs.
The polygraphs were administered because Dullahan had been asked to participate in a classified program. He accepted, but the position was subject to an FBI-
administered polygraph test.
After he was fired, Dullahan appealed to the secretary of defense, his only option. In one of his last acts before stepping down, Robert M. Gates granted Dullahan’s appeal, writing that he was “not convinced that procedures prescribed in other provisions of law that authorize your termination could not have been invoked in your case.”
That changed the landscape, allowing the settlement, Zaid said. The lawyer said it is still not clear why the Pentagon invoked the national security clause. He suspects Dullahan may have been a test case. “Someone came down incredibly harsh to see if they could set a precedent,” Zaid said. “In the end, DIA did the right thing.”