Interesting. I wonder, then, what the qualifications are for such a job.
How old is he? This is not a bad thing for a parent. It puts him on the right path even if he decides on something else along the way. First step, get a college degree. Second step, go to law school…
Just out of curiosity, why where you so looking forward to “sending them packing?”
As best I can see, the ability to knock on doors, dial a phone, answer questions and fill out forms (I hope he needs to have a clearance as well). This is just the guy doing the leg work. Once he gathers the information someone higher up determines if the clearance will be granted.
The company that does it is USIS. They have a website (USIS dot com). I found the guys business card in my wallet.
I’m going through the process of getting my DOE clearance. OPM (Office of Personnel Management) is performing the investigation.
When I had my initial interview, the person took out a piece of paper, and asked me if I knew any of my neighbors. I named the couple that I did know, and she put a mark by them. It was basically a printout of my 20 closest neighbors. If the ones that dropped by your place had an address that didn’t exist, perhaps they thought you were a neighbor, or, more likely, a former neighbor. They most certainly talked to my neighbors before I knew about it.
Did you have to fill out the dreaded SF86?
Hopefully you recall putting it there yourself…
<cue spooky conspiracy-theory theme music>
… or maybe you don’t remember anything at all! :eek:
(Heh.)
www.zabasearch.com will show rented addresses as well.
When I was in college, I briefly flirted with the idea of joining the FBI or going into some form of law enforcement. I called the local FBI office to ask questions about the basic requirements, and left a message for someone in recruiting (or whatever the equivalent position is called). I had to go out for awhile, and when I came home, my mom met me at the door.
Mom: “Is everything okay?”
Me: “Huh?”
Mom: “Someone from the FBI just called for you. I told them you weren’t home and offered to take a message, and he said it was a personal matter and he could only talk to you! Is everything okay?”
Me: (uproarious laughter at my mom’s near-panic)
I explained everything, and felt bad for freaking her out. I hadn’t even told her I was interested in law enforcement, so what was she supposed to think? Still, it was funny.
Officially the requirement is a Bachelors degree and decent English skills. And that’s bloody well it. There’s fairly substantial in-house new hire training. As to the clearance, an investigation that would allow granting clearance up to a TS-SCI is conducted, though (for OPM contractors), the clearance is not actually granted, after a spate of people going clearance shopping for a while after OPM’s investigations privatized in 1994 (or was that '96?).
Let’s just say that, hypothetically, somebody in this thread may so happen to be an employee of USIS who does said legwork on Background Investigations. He kind of stumbled into the job at a college job fair, and most of his coworkers come from similarly humble work experience. Though there are a fair number of retired military enlisted, typically not in the DC area.
And the investigations pretty much work like this:
- The investigator(s) gather information from the subject, sources, records, etc.
- They send their reports to an OPM location in the middle-of-nowhere PA (mostly more contractors), where the cases are reviewed for completeness and full issue resolution.
- They are then sent on to the agency that requested the investigation of OPM, and it is somebody in the requesting agency who makes the actual security adjudication.
The biggest time sink in the investigations is gathering enough sources (depending on the case type, there may be up to a minimum requirement of ten sources, four of which have to be social). So if you get an OPM, DSS, or FBI investigator at your door, be kind and either talk about your contact with the individual or say “I don’t know them,” and at least they can cross you off on their attempts. Just sayin’.
I seriously considered applying to the FBI, until I realized I’d probably be doing a lot of traveling, or living in places where I really didn’t want to live.
Hypothetically of course. 
That was the big problem. I needed a bunch of “social” sources and some from my neighborhood. I’ll let you guess which clearance I need. The conversation went something like this:
Him: I need to talk to some of your neighbors.
Me: I don’t really know any.
Him: What do you mean?
Me: We moved here about a year ago.
Him: Didn’t you meet any of them.
Me: A couple. Don’t remember their names. The reason we moved here is so that we wouldn’t be living on top of other people.
Him: I guess I’ll just knock on some doors.
Me: Good luck with that.
I hope he got what he needed. I haven’t heard back from him in a while…
He’s 16. He’s already with an Explorer post in a nearby town’s PD, he is getting all A’s and B’s in school (with three AP classes to boot!) - his intent is to go through Naval ROTC, then college (via the Navy) with a double major - law and accounting - then Naval Service (officer training) then FBI (or CIA - he just won’t do secret service. He said he doesn’t feel like taking a bullet for any of those squirrels. And that’s a direct quote.)
The kid obviously needs some guidance, huh? 
We’re very, very, very proud of the little guy. Well not so little anymore - he’s 6’4".
If only he had a little ambition he might go a long way.
I’ve often wanted to start an “Ask the Security Investigator” thread because, as evidenced by this thread (and others that come up from time to time), there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about the process that makes things harder than they have to be. A lot of it comes from people assuming that we’re all Elliot Ness with God complexes (is that redundant?) or that ass in The Iron Giant, just like the movies, and subsequently some investigators buying into the image and scaring people.
But unfortunately, there’s just too much that is either sensitive OPM information or proprietary USIS information (or similar private guidelines for DSS and FBI investigators, of which I know far less, but still a bit), that most of my answers would be “I can’t tell you that” that it would render such a thread useless.
I said nothing in my above post that I don’t rattle off in my introductory spiel to subjects or am allowed to explain when sources are hard to come by. But I had to read over the post a few times first, and cut a few sentences, before I felt safe doing so.
No, I had to fill out a QNSP (Question for National Security Position), where I listed where I lived, worked, and who I hung out with since I was 16.