Outside Employment in the Intelligence Community- Pay 'Em Twice or More?

 Following quote from this website:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/12/01/interesting-tidbits-from-the-house-intelligence-authorization/

"Section 701: Eliminates reporting that probably shouldn’t be eliminated

James Clapper hates reporting requirements, and with this bill he’d get rid of some more of them, some of which are innocuous.
But I am concerned that the bill would eliminate this report on what outside entities spooks are also working for.

(2) The Director of National Intelligence shall annually submit to the congressional intelligence committees a report describing all outside employment for officers and employees of elements of the intelligence community that was authorized by the head of an element of the intelligence community during the preceding calendar year. Such report shall be submitted each year on the date provided in section 3106 of this title."

This is a google search on [government employee outside employment] no quotes to provide background and reference to rules, regs, policy and ethics.  What's ethics got to do with it?  It's just a second hand emotion.

A DNI report on outside employment is an inconvenient thing.   Especially inconvenient if it leads to the revelation of double dipping.  Double Dipping is generally presented in relation to benefits like retirement of tax advantage.  Double Dipping is also receiving two federal employee paychecks for doing the same job or working the same hours applied to two different government military or GS ratings and getting paid for both of them.  That is illegal.  Rare exceptions.  It is also a great way to compensate government employment for work beyond which the government is able to pay in accordance with standard pay scale.  There are "bonus" methods to do this legally but they are limited when it comes to very special situations where the government cannot compensate an government employee at a rate competitive with civilian employment paying many times the government rate.

It is a government dilemma in competition with private business.  Especially when it is essential that the employee be a government agent for certain essential, practically mandatory, situations.  How to to get around that problem in those extremely rare but necessary situations?

It is a question that might be asked when a person is being interviewed for one of those rare government positions or a person in a government position that has knowledge or may have knowledge that a federal employee in a position like that is being paid (for example) many times more than GS pay scale by structured indirect methods that hide the fact that it boils down to being paid by the government beyond what government regulations allow.

Where might that be most applicable?  Probably in government positions requiring security clearances beyond Top Secret.  Candidates for those jobs or who would become knowledgeable of that situation applied to others might be asked what they think of that double(or more)  payment by the government to employees it absolutely must have in defense of this country making it essential for the government to employ such people and it could not do so in competition with private industry.

What is the alternative?  Appeal to patriotism?  Might work but it is like flowers are nice but liquor is quicker.  Everyone signs a form not to tell.

The other test question:  The Constitution was never meant to be a suicide pact was it?  Strange question.  At the granular level yes, it is a death pact that a person will die for and swear an oath to do so.  At the aggregate level is not a death pact that a nation will die for at its own hand?  If the nation is to survive then its own rules must be sacrificed for the good of the whole?

Break the rules.  Pay certain critical and probably security related positions with government funds more than mandatory pay scales allow  Keep it secret for the good of the country.  Eliminate any rules that might lead to revealing this evasion.

Perhaps it is the same moral hazard that leads to tax evasion through avoidance schemes by the very powerful in business for power/profit motive .  Law evasion through avoidance schemes by the powerful in government for power/patriotic motive.

The law is the law.  I would not condone its true evasion by logical reasons for avoidance.  If the law does not work then change it.

When stuck between a rock and a hard place....do the right thing.  The most dangerous person is perhaps one that would always do the right thing.  To undertake the obligation to an oath to do that in all circumstances.  What is the right thing?  Truth is a guideline in that decision.

Intelligence is a paradox.  It seeks to discover the truth as an object but in the process of discovery must be hidden from, protected from the truth?

You can't handle the truth!  Therefore we must for you!  We know how to do it.  You have no need to know.  We have to be above the law.  Even above the Law of the Land for a higher purpose. TINA.

Sound like Clapper?

Treasury IG for Tax Administration says of the IRS:  "Controls Over Outside Employment Are Not Sufficient to Prevent or Detect Conflicts of Interest"  (

September 29, 2014 Reference Number: 2014-10-073)

Could it be any different elsewhere in the government?