I, too, would be surprised to find that the Social Security Administration contacts past employers. What would they need to contact them for?

Well - I just looked it up and it seems the disability examiners for the SSA do sonetimes contact past employers. Here's a link:

DOES SOCIAL SECURITY CONTACT YOUR FORMER WORK EMPLOYERS WHEN YOU FILE FOR DISABILITY?

"Therefore, despite the fact that disability examiners generally rely on the information provided by a claimant in a work history report or work activity questionaire, there are occasions in which an examiner will contact a claimant's former employer.

As a disability examiner, I myself did this to learn more about what a claimant's work duties were for a particular job and to learn also what difficulties the claimant had in performing these duties."