Pentagon Cyber Official Resigns After Security Clearance Dispute

(Bloomberg) – A Pentagon official who led a new cybersecurity initiative for defense contractors but was later placed on administrative leave after her security clearance was suspended has resigned, saying she was punished for political reasons.

Katie Arrington, the chief information security officer for the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office, informed the department’s top industrial affairs officials of her decision on Monday, according to her resignation letter made available to Bloomberg News.

Arrington is a former private sector cyber expert and Republican state representative from South Carolina who was brought into the Pentagon during the Trump administration under the category of “Highly Qualified Expert.” She later competed for and attained the nonpartisan Senior Executive Service status.

Her resignation came almost nine months after she was informed in May that her security clearance for access to classified information was being suspended as “a result of a reported Unauthorized Disclosure of Classified Information and subsequent removal of access by the National Security Agency,” according to a memo.

Arrington claimed that a formal “Statement of Reasons” for her clearance suspension that the Pentagon provided in December “is still non-descript and bereft of substantiating rationale or detail justifying my suspension.”

Trump-Era Pentagon Official Sues as Suspension Reaches 5 Months

The suspension was “in my perception, a politically influenced action driven to silence me because I was in the process of filing a Hostile Work Environment claim” against a current Pentagon official and she was “concurrently navigating issues of overreach” by the NSA’s Directorate of Cyber, Arrington said in her resignation letter.

Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell didn’t provide immediate comment on the resignation letter.

Since May, Arrington has fought a legal battle to get full disclosure of the allegations against her and restoration of her security clearance. She counter-sued the Pentagon in October “due to the lack of evidence,” saying that she was “deprived of procedural and substantive due process,” the suit asserts.

Arrington settled the lawsuit last month, with the Pentagon paying attorney’s fees, according to her resignation letter.

Her LinkedIn page says she left the Pentagon this month, and “Stay tuned.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/pentagon-cyber-official-resigns-after-security-clearance-dispute/ar-AATAaYP