Shocking pictures showing Kristi Noem’s husband cross-dressing revealed a “crazy” oversight in security vetting because they could have made the former Secretary of Homeland Security vulnerable to blackmail, senior security experts told The Post.
The pictures of Bryon Noem wearing comically oversized lopsided breasts — complete with fake protruding nipples — reportedly left Kristi Noem “blind-sided” after they were obtained and published by the Daily Mail on Tuesday.
But Noem’s remarks could reveal problems with her vetting for the top job overseeing domestic US security, according to former CIA agent Tracy Walder.
Walder described the lengthy process she went through when she took up an entry position in the government almost three decades ago.
“It is standard practice, even like myself when I first started at the CIA, for their spouse or cohabitant to be subject to a background investigation,” said Walder, who rose through the ranks to become Staff Operations Officer at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and a Special Agent at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
“They would look at criminal history, foreign influence, financial status, and reliability to ensure that they can’t be coerced by a foreign government,” she said, recounting her own arduous vetting experience.
“They came to interview me. I lived in a sorority house at the time; there were 185 other girls, and they interviewed all of them. They interviewed my parents. They interviewed the friends of my parents,” she said.
“I was only 20. So I really had no skeletons in my closet. I underwent two polygraph tests, one 8 hours, and another the next day, which was six hours,” Walder explained.
“If they were vetting me, if they were vetting my friend’s husbands, there’s no question they’re vetting cabinet members,” she said.
She said that any possible compromise for the family members of a cabinet secretary could become leverage for blackmailers and enemies of the US.
“It’s crazy to hear that some of these things were looked over — not his fetish — but the fact that she could have been susceptible to coercion,” said Walder.
In the course of the investigation into Bryon’s involvement in the so-called “bimbofication” fetish scene, it emerged that he had allegedly paid at least $25,000 to “bimbo” fetish sites to chat with online models.
Walder pointed out that these financial transactions could have compromised both him and Kristi Noem — and that similar actions from a CIA officer would have been instantly flagged in any vetting process.
Since the infamous case of Soviet spy Aldrich Ames in the 1990s, every CIA officer’s finances are checked “every two years to ensure that there’s no unusual activity based on what we’re making,” she said.
Trecherous Ames paid for a $750,000 house in cash, bought a Jaguar, and splurged on diamonds before his crimes came to light — all cash given to him by the Soviet Union.
“I would assume that Noem’s husband has unusual financial activity because he was donating $25,000 to some of these fetish sites,” Walder said.
In the coming days, questions will be asked about when Kristi Noem became aware of her husband’s online presence, particularly in the wake of her removal from the DHS in March.
“In a normal world for a normal employee, information indicating that a cleared employee’s spouse was living a secret double life — to say nothing of the accusations of Noem’s own extramarital affair — would be a clear security risk,” attorney Bradley P. Moss told The Post.
“A normal employee would face serious scrutiny, at a minimum, regarding their ability to maintain a clearance, if not simply denied in general,” he added.
The issue is not the sexual predilections per se, national security lawyer Dan Meyer said — but it is relevant someone could use them against the Noem.
“Federal security moved on from the days of hunting down diversity. As long as the intimacy or expression is consensual and not criminal, your clearance will stay intact,” Meyer said.
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“Don’t record any kink, or even sex. Even if lawful and consensual, you may be black-mailable because of your body image,” he added.
“Someone could threaten to post you in the buff, and you could flinch because you don’t like the way you filmed. Same for your cohabitants, including spouses and lovers,” Meyer said.
