No other choice but for OPM Director Archuleta to resign
Tom Temin@tteminWFED
Dog trainers like to say there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. I know. We have a now-elderly greyhound. She rules the roost, mostly. But because of her mild personality, she's never out of control, never pulls on the leash, and has never so much as made a growl at anyone. Mostly she saunters into the middle of the room and lays on her back, her tummy available for anyone who cares to rub it. But leave a hamburger on the counter, a cold drink on a side table, or an unattended dinner plate of food, and oh boy. Don't turn your back. She'll pretty much have it devoured before you can turn around and say, "No!" One time the extended family retired to the living room and family room after Thanksgiving dinner. After putting away some dishes I went into the dining room to pull the tablecloth. There was Lizzie, atop of the dining room table, licking up crumbs and tidbits. Unlike China, which denies everything when it is caught stealing data, a dog caught stealing food looks at you and says through her eyes, "What did I do? You left it there." This is what I thought of when reading comments former CIA Director Michael Hayden made to a Wall Street Journal conference regarding the awful database breach. The U.S. personnel records were "a legitimate foreign intelligence target," Hayden said. He added that our intelligence apparatus would do the same thing if it had half a chance. Hayden said he wouldn't have thought twice about grabbing any Chinese government database the CIA could. "This is not 'shame on China.' This is 'shame on us' for not protecting that kind of information," Hayden said. OPM left a juicy, sizzling hamburger on the counter. The dog snatched it.
A young Lizzie cleaning up after Thanksgiving.
Perhaps the U.S. government does do the same thing to rival nations. We don't know for sure. Let's hope so, because at the least it would leave things in a rough state of Spy vs Spy equilibrium. Because it is justifiably embarrassed, and because it can't really do anything about Chinese cyber behavior, the accusations from the administration have been mild and sporadic. Unfortunately, I see no other recourse other than for OPM Director Katherine Archuleta to resign. I don't say this with any satisfaction. Not that she was personally responsible for the breach. Not that she's a bad person. But the warnings were there, she had the knowledge that the hacked systems were behind on their FISMA certifications, and of the string of attacks going back a year. It all happened on her watch and it potentially harmed enough people to fill New York City, Chicago, Baltimore and Dallas. It's not that she was personally malfeasant, it's just goes with the territory. Had a rocket landed on the OPM building, that would have been one thing. But an egregious organizational performance lapse of this scale claims the person ultimately responsible. Recall what happened back in 2012 at the General Services Administration. A conference 18 months earlier on which regional officials spent indiscreetly and contracted criminally came to light. Administrator Martha Johnson resigned before the reason why became known. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki toughed it out for a while, but ultimately had to step down after the drip-drip-drip of bad news from the patient scheduling scandal of last year. OPM, as Francis Rose points out, has lost its credibility. Now it needs new leadership to restore it.
Read all of Federal News Radio's coverage of the OPM Cyber Breach.
Tom Temin is host of The Federal Drive, which airs 6-9 a.m. on Federal News Radio (1500AM). This post was originally written for his personal blog, Temin on Tech.
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Tom Temin is host of the Federal Drive and has been providing insight on federal technology and management issues for more than 30 years.
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