Security clearances are ostensibly hard to come by, as a number of Trump associates can attest. But there have been some notable exceptions — including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles who were accidentally granted access to classified information as a result of a massive U.S. government backlog in the issuing of security clearances.

The backlog of over 700,000 cases has made waiting times for top-secret clearance on average close to a year, a senior government official told a panel in Washington D.C. last week, leading to temporary clearances being issued for contractors and other officials just to keep government programs running.

But some patently unfit for security clearances have slipped through before comprehensive background checks can be fully investigated.

“I’ve got murderers who have access to classified information. I have rapists. I have pedophiles. I have people involved in child porn,” Daniel Payne, the director of the Defense Security Service told the conference. “This is the risk we are taking.”

Charles Phalen, the director of the National Background Investigations Bureau who also spoke at the conference said that the government’s ability to conduct background checks was slashed by 60 percent after it cut a contract with a company in 2014, according to the Associated Press. But the demand for employees has largely outweighed the risk of granting the wrong people access.

“If we did not give these individuals interim clearances, the production of these programs would shut down,” Payne said. “It would have a horrific impact.”

Some key takeaways: