A violation of my fargin civil rights

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m undergoing a government security clearance investigation because my employer wants me to have access to “Secret” classified military technology. Last June, I submitted about a hundred frickin pages of information covering everything from where I’ve lived for the last ten years to my detailed medical, criminal, and financial history. Already I’m thinking this is bullshit, but the rationale is that they don’t want someone with access to secret material to have some kind of skeleton in the closet that could be used as blackmail. So OK.

A few months later, an agent comes to conduct the standard interview. Agent and I spend an hour or so carefully constructing explanations for why I smoked pot once and why I’ll never do it again, and why I have an unpaid $100 medical bill from 1992, and how I promise to hunt down the creditor and pay it. All that data gets submitted.

Time passes and I hear nothing from Uncle Sam. My boss wants to know what’s going on, because it gets tiresome to have to talk around the classified data when you’re trying to have a technical discussion. So I contact the Inspector General of the Defense Security Service to find out what the Christ is up with my investigation. And I am told that

they will not, as a matter of policy, discuss an ongoing investigation with the subject being investigated. They will only entertain inquiries from the security manager of the subject’s employer

WTGDF? I can’t get a simple status report from the government about my own goddamned investigation?! I have to ask the little guy who hands out donuts to the security guards to look into it, and then he doesn’t even have to tell me what he found out?

What possible standing does my motherfucking employer have in regard to this? First, why do I not have the right to a simple status report? I’m not asking for the names of any sources they may have contacted, or any other sensitive information, just a fucking status report. Second, why does my employer have not only the right, but the exclusive privilege of getting such a report?

Ball-munching, cheek-splaying, bung-nuzzling, dong-slurping, anus-ravishing, goat-sniffing, shit-eating, dirk-diggling, sons of bitches! Smug, officious, robotic, pube-knitting, employee bathroom wanking, mail reading, macrofelchers! Motherfucking shitwads! Dicklicking, tax-salaried, rump rustling, monkey-molesting, semen receptacles? GODDAMNIT!!

2

I kneel in front of you, in awe of your incredible textual powers.

jarbabyj has nothing on you.

3

Gotcha beat, City Gent.

Started my military tech school in October. Graduated the following June. Went to an additional tech school in July, completed that in September. Arrived at my first duty station in October and STILL had to wait for my TS/SCI clearance.

And all this from a fresh-out-of-high-school boot who had done nothing worse than smoke in the bathrooms :rolleyes:

Military intelligence and all that, ya know?

4

My mom had a lower level military clearance for a while while the B-2 was in the works. What line of work are you in? Could you tell me? Or would you have to kill me? :D(I’m killing myself over here.)

Nice rants. So does that mean that youdon’t get a paycheck until the clearance goes through, or do they have you sweeping floors etc?

5

Ack.

Should’ve mentioned that my security clearance started while I was in boot camp in June … a full 16 months from start to finish.

wishbone - No one got in to our SCIF without either proper clearance or an escort. So I got babysat for about 6 weeks til the stupid thing came through; couldn’t go to lunch or out for a smoke without someone walking me out and back in again :mad:

6

I went to the Navy recruiting office a couple of years ago(I’m young) to see which programs I would qualify for. As it turned out, my test score was one of the highest that the recruiters there had ever seen. :rolleyes: (I’m not surprised, don’t most smart people go to college?) In case you don’t know, all the “brains” go into the nuke progam, which means I would probably end up on a sub or in a silo as a tuclear technician. Now, I heard that these guys can make from 200k to 300k per year working at a nuclear power plant in the middle of North Dakota, but I just couldn’t see myself doing it. Plus, I had done a lot of drugs before then and I would have never passed the clearance check. :frowning: Too bad, so sad.

7

I’m a rocket engineer and most of our motors are used on missiles. There are only a few situations that involve secret information, so I have plenty of other stuff to keep me busy. Not having the clearance is only a minor annoyance, but the lengthy delay (apparently there is a backlog) is making it into a moderate annoyance.

What toasts my giblets is that they’ll give a status report to my meat-whistle of a security manager but not to me. It’s my life they’re investigating. I think their policy of a blanket refusal to update the subject on his own investigation may actually be illegal (Freedom of Information Act and all). I’ve been accused of making a federal case out of things in my life; now I may get a chance to actually do it! Cockenheimers.

8

I can unerstand why they might be a little touchy about security with the Hanson case going on.

I think I could make up a sentence using the words bolted, horse, stable door and after.

9

To briefly hijack, I once took the “ASVAB” (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, if I remember right) in high school, for the purpose of getting out of a not-very-favorite class, and out of curiosity. Every single question, spatial relation problem, etc., was so stunningly easy to me that ever since I’ve had a nagging sense of worry about who we give enormous destructive power to. In any case, I buried the needle on the score.

Hopeful recruiters from all four branches called me repeatedly over the next year, and occasional calls for a couple years following, apparently to see if I would be interested in dropping the whole college thing and giving them a whirl instead. Truly dogged persistence, which in retrospect eases some of the worry above.

10

Like many of the posters above, I also took and aced tthe ASVAB. All four branches were calling me for about two years, and I still get the occasional postcard from the Navy.

Like you, City Gent, I too have suffered at the hands of the inanity that is getting a security clearance from the government. My first one, for an INTERNSHIP no less, took seven months. My current one-even though the SSBI was done in 99, will probably take three-to six. Basically, they’ve done all the paperwork within TWO YEARS and now instead of just checking what’s changed (my employment and my address) they’re going to run a full new clearance. And since I’m not employed (yet) by the agency that’s doing it, I can’t even ask a security manager- I have to go through a “liason” officer in OPM. I’m going to be a Foreign Service Officer,trusted to go abroad for my country, and they can’t even give me a periodic heads-up? Twatbaskets.

11

Hell, my Q-clearance breezed right through, although a few of my friends were mighty surprised to be getting calls from a “Lieutenant Colonel Suchandsuch” while they were checking up on me. Maybe the DOE is more efficient at granting clearances than the DOD…

wishbone, from my experience, past drug use isn’t a problem (I had friends with clearances who were former pot smokers) as long as you’re candid about it. The only real big hurdles are if you have foreign friends you correspond with regularly and if there’s anything in your past that someone could potentially use to blackmail you.

12

You guys do know that there are foreigners on this board, don’t you?

(looks over his shoulder)

… and I’m one of them :wink:

13

The DOE and the DOD are in two different worlds. During the Wen Ho Lee goings-on, I remember the debate over whether scientists from the national labs should continue to host and attend conferences at which technical information was exchanged between US and Chinese nationals, some taking place on Chinese soil. Absolutely inconceivable where I work! For instance, there’s a user’s guide for some general-purpose structural analysis software; it’s marked ITAR (can’t remember what the letters stand for) which means if you take it home to study it, and a non-U.S. citizen comes over to visit and starts flipping through it, you’re guilty of a crime, because the software could potentially be used to design a missile.

The lengthy waits people are reporting make me feel a little better. I still think the government’s refusal to give an update when requested by the subject is Gestapo-esque. Actually, at this point, I’m considering changing from solid to liquid rockets (for unrelated reasons), which is mostly civilian applications, so the whole thing may become moot soon.

14

That too. :slight_smile:
City Gent,

I bet you get real tired of people saying “It’s not rocket science!”

15

I have absolutely nothing to add to this conversation other than the fact that I love a guy who quotes from Johnny Dangerously.

You fargin icehole! :wink:

16

Hey City Gent,

If it helps, it took me a whole 12 months to get mine. I don’t even really need it all that much, but I filled out my fourteen sheets of dot matrix crap and got my clearance no problem!

It’ll get there. I can agree with casdave in that after Hanssen, I’ve seen a lot of clearances get slowed down. It’s just a logjam right now. . .

Tripler
I could tell you, but I’d be blowing smoke. I just don’t know that much sensitive stuff. . .

17

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Drastic *
**

I did too. I thought that the ASVAB was an absurdly easy exam.

Got a number of inquiries afterwards in the mail. Even a phone call. Never got another one after I explained to the recruiter that I was severely-to-profoundly deaf.

Apparently they prefer soldiers that have the ability to hear someone sneaking up on them. :smiley:

18

Oh yeah,

But as far as yer Civil Rights, they ain’t violated yet . . .

Tripler

19

Hehehe…scores and military people.

I loved those phone calls. My statement was “You don’t want me, I wouldn’t make a good employee. I don’t believe in supporting a standing military.”

They love it let me tell you. Most sputter helplessly for a bit, take a few stabs at fearmongering about being invaded by Canada and piss off. The Marine guy was the most fun. He sputtered and then tried to debate military history with me. He was stupid enough to pick the Revolutionary War. (If he had picked anything remotely modern I would have known nothing…but Revolutionary through Civil is beaten to death in school. And the tests had already proven I was a bright girl.)

So it was an entertaining 40 minutes and then he went away satisfied that I would suck as any kind of military underling and pissed off. (I would. I’m mouthy and have no respect for authority. Above and beyond the whole I’d rather we didn’t have a military ideal.)

20

heheh. Oh yeah, I’m aware, and I’d fess up if I were still working there, but I stopped needing a clearance in around 1996.

Not that I ever knew any secrets anyway… (looks around shiftily) So, how about those Mets?