South Dakota Scif Plan Puzzles Dhs, Cisa Officials

Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pushed the nation’s cyber defense agency to back the installation of a secure intelligence-sharing facility at a university in Secretary Kristi Noem’s home state of South Dakota. 

But those with direct knowledge of the request say there is no clear national security need for the project, despite pressure on CISA staffers to make a case for it.

There are also concerns around funding for the installation — which would need to be built from scratch and could cost millions — and some argue the move could give the Noem-aligned Dakota State University a leg up on future federal contracts.

“There is certainly no CISA mission that needs to share classified info with South Dakota more than any other state,” said one former agency official familiar with the planning.

POLITICO spoke to four current and former officials familiar with the planning, all of whom were granted anonymity due to fear of retribution.

Noem previously served as the governor of South Dakota before being confirmed last year by President Donald Trump to lead DHS, which houses CISA and shepherds its budget.

In a statement, CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy said that CISA’s intention to sponsor the sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, followed a March 18 executive order from Trump to empower state and local governments to strengthen “security and resilience nationwide.”

SCIFs are government-accredited facilities where federal officials can store and share top secret material known as TS/SCI — the country’s most highly classified intelligence. About 1.25 million Americans have this level of security clearance, according to the most recent figures from the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, though it’s unclear how many of those individuals are located in South Dakota.

McCarthy also said that the agency was evaluating options to ensure highly classified intelligence could be shared directly with partners in hard-to-reach areas of the country: “The proposed SCIF at the Dakota State University in Sioux Falls is in a region with limited access to classified space, creating high demand from federal agencies and forcing TS/SCI-cleared personnel to travel hundreds of miles to obtain TS-level threat information,” she wrote in an email.

McCarthy also said the project was not unique and was instead part of a broader effort to “bring SCIFs to states that do not have any.” She added that the SCIF was not being built for Noem’s personal use now as secretary — or potentially in the future.

“It is almost two hours from her home and she, like other Cabinet secretaries, travels to a SCIF per regulation from Congress,” McCarthy said in an email.

Dakota State University did not respond to a request for comment. 

The project was first tasked to CISA in early March 2025, according to the four people familiar with the planning.

The then-senior-most political appointee at CISA, Karen Evans, asked staff at the agency to attest to the need for a new SCIF at Dakota State University, according to two of the people. Evans did not reply to a request for comment.

The proposal drew immediate scrutiny from DHS and CISA staff because there was no clear need to share intelligence material at that classification level directly with DHS staff or partners near the university, the four people said.

Two of the people added that staff felt pressure to come up with a justification despite their reservations about the arrangement. One said they were told explicitly that this project must proceed because it is a “Secretary-level priority.”

Contractors and leading research universities compete fiercely to find federal agencies that will “sponsor” them, vouching that they can handle highly classified intelligence material, which makes them more competitive when bidding on future federal contracts. The sponsoring entity, in turn, must “accredit” the SCIF by certifying it is built and maintained in accordance with federal security standards.

The unusual, top-down push for the SCIF “creates the appearance that the department is picking favorites — boosting the marketability of a friendly institution under the banner of national security — without going through the normal federal planning or funding process,” said a current department official.

A DHS-led SCIF working group in early 2024 identified regions of the country that needed more SCIFs — and South Dakota wasn’t one of them, said the current official and a former senior U.S. national security official, both with direct knowledge of the effort.

“There were much higher priorities that we were looking at,” said the former official, who did not have knowledge of the proposed project at DSU.

McCarthy did not respond to a question about what changed between now and the time of the DHS working group.

Another point of confusion is how the project will be funded.

The four people with knowledge of the ongoing initiative expressed concern because Dakota State University does not yet have a SCIF to accredit, and staff were initially confused about whether DHS would foot the bill for its construction. Two of the people estimated it could cost DHS a few million dollars to build a new facility, though they cautioned that the figure can vary widely.

Some SCIFs can be built into a room the size of a closet, while others resemble a small conference room with multiple workstations and secure conferencing equipment. The facilities are expensive on a square-foot basis, since they must meet extensive security standards — from soundproofing to physical and network security — to prevent unauthorized personnel from eavesdropping on or otherwise filching sensitive national security secrets.

Any support funding for the SCIF from CISA would come at a moment of intense belt-tightening at the agency. CISA has lost roughly 1,000 personnel over the last year amid the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. At DHS, Noem and one of her senior advisers, Corey Lewandowski, have veto power over any contract or grant that exceeds $100,000, POLITICO has previously reported.

McCarthy said that the SCIF would not be built with federal money. “The university is in the process of the design and construction of a new facility, without federal funding, and would have dedicated space that meets SCIF accreditation standards and will be accessible to DHS and other TS/SCI-cleared personnel," she wrote in a statement.

Two of the four people interviewed said that DHS, at a minimum, would have to pay for the process of accrediting the facility and stationing staff nearby who hold an appropriate clearance and could control access to any intelligence shared there. The price for that would likely be modest, they acknowledged.

Still, any federal investment appears at odds with Noem’s push to get other states to build SCIFs.

In a letter sent this April to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, Noem recommended that “every state” build a SCIF but said DHS had “no federal funding” to support the projects. The letter was first reported in May by StateScoop and recently obtained by POLITICO.

McCarthy did not respond when asked for clarification on DHS’s position about federal funding for other states that are seeking to build SCIFs. She also did not respond to a question about whether DHS ever had a plan or intention to fund the construction of the facility at DSU.

The four people interviewed are skeptical that even a minimal investment in a new South Dakota SCIF would be worth it long term.

As of early last year, the first former agency official said, CISA had hundreds of regional staff with TS/SCI clearances across the country — with only dozens or fewer in the part of the country incorporating South Dakota. But that was before the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce, they cautioned.

Cleared personnel from other DHS components, like ICE or CBP, could use the facility.

That former official and two others pointed out that DHS has other ways to share urgent intelligence with regional staff and local officials, including by relaying similar material at lower classification levels or borrowing existing SCIFs from other federal agencies. Sioux Falls is a roughly three-hour drive from the state’s capital of Pierre.

“It’s just delusional that anybody would even be able to use that SCIF,” said the third person.

DSU is a center for academic excellence under a program managed by the NSA’s National Cryptologic School. On the NSA’s website, CISA is listed as one of many federal partners for the program.

In 2024, Jen Easterly, Joe Biden’s CISA Director, visited DSU and praised the students’ “incredible talent” in an interview, McCarthy noted in her email.

A second former senior U.S. national security official and a senior Democratic congressional aide with extensive knowledge of the accreditation process agreed that DHS’s seeming commitment to sponsor a SCIF that was not yet built and without a clear reason for doing so was questionable.

“Having an intelligence community sponsor is like being pre-cleared to compete in a category most institutions never even get to enter,” said the second former official.

Even the optics of Noem’s connection to the project are problematic, added the aide: “If Biden did this for a Delaware university, people would lose their minds.”