Wednesday, May 27, 2015



August, 1990, Chicago: American Bar Association Annual meeting investigates security clearance denials, revocations and due process violations: Ed Slavin, chair program on security clearance due process with (left to right), Ropes & Gray lawyer Len Coburn; Judge Robert Bamford; Judge Delbert "Chip" Terrill; General Hugh Overholt; Ed Slavin, program chair, then Government Accountability Project Legal Counsel for Constitutional Rights (also Young Lawyers Division Human and Civil Rights Committee Chair and YLD Liaison member of the ABA Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section); Steptoe & Johnson partner, Richard K. Willard (elbow only)(former U.S. Assistant Attorney General); Government Accountability Project Legal Director Thomas M. Devine; ACLU lobbyist Leslie Harris; and Dr. Franklin Kameny, Ph.D., (American Gay rights icon and himself a victim of a wrongful security clearance revocation rubber-stamped by Civil Service Commission and United States Supreme Court, later apologized for by Presidents Clinton and  Obama).
Our ABA Young Lawyers Division, National Council of Administrative Law Judges and Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section and Administrative Law Section won passage of an ABA House of Delegates resolution on security clearance reform in Honolulu in August 1989.  Then Viveca Novak wrote a Common Cause Magazine cover story. Then Congressman Don Edwards and Gary Sikorski co-chaired six days of security clearance reform hearings during 1990-1991, leading to proposed Bush I executive order not being issued, and reforms under Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Photo credit: Robert I. Teir

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