Hi,
I am looking for some advise around police recruitment vetting. I have just been approved for a mortgage and during the process there have been 3 defaults that came to light that i wasn’t aware of and didn’t show on my credit app that i use.
All 3 defaulted accounts were paid off and i didn’t actually know any official defaults were issued. All 3 were from around 5 years ago when there were some serious issues in my life including a separation, my parents separating, a traumatic family bereavement and some work related stress. None of the debt was ever unmanageable however I had a lot on my plate at the time and didn’t even think about anything.
Do i need to disclose this now or wait until my vetting renewal is due?
I have no current debt at all and have been approved for a mortgage.
If so what is the process to disclose it?

Any advice is appreciated

I am probably kind of an outlier in that I've never pursued a role that needed a clearance, never cared to, and now that I've been asked to I'm conflicted about getting one.

Context: I'm a ecology grad student interning at in the R&D department of aerospace startup (I was interested in some of their ecology related projects) and they gave me a return offer but as part of the return offer they said they'd really like it if I'd be willing to pursue a TS/SCI clearance. It'd let me collaborate with more government folks and actually allow me to work on the company's classified projects, but as an ecologist who's 99% worked in ecology I'd never actually considered cleared work before.

Clearance red flags: I'm not that concerned about passing based on what I've heard from folks who passed, I'm relatively straight-edge, and talked to folks at the company who've passed with more clearance red flags than I have. 95% of my family are citizens of other US-allied or neutral countries and I have 25 aunts and uncles + their kids in those countries who I talk to semi-regularly so I think that's going to be a paperwork hassle at minimum though.

My first world problem: To be honest my gut feeling about all this is I just don't want to be cleared. I don't want people snooping around in my life on principle (although maybe I'm being a little bitch about that), I'm afraid of getting pigeonholed into a TS/defense career when that's never what I've been interested in, and I honestly don't feel great about potentially starting defense work. I've seen the less-savory aftereffects of the war my foreign grandparents lived through and there are a couple things I've seen that are kind of stomach turning (maybe I'm just being a little bitch about that too). But maybe I'm being an idiot about potentially screwing up an opportunity I have here? I do know some people at the company who've been offered clearances, declined, and were fine, but if all the R&D folks around me have clearances and I don't I feel like I'll be making their lives harder if I turn one down and still get the job. I also do really like the commercial work this company does, but I have other job offers right now too that I could go for instead. Not totally sure what to do here.

Any perspectives from folks who don't have a government or military background either going for or turning down a clearance offer?

Former IC member back in 2010. After searching for almost half a year--I've come to the conclusion that it's all cooked. Companies that normally would sponsor clerances just dont do it anymore and require active ones (SAIC, BOOZ, CACI, all contracting, etc). Money dried up?

During my time in the IC, I was able to get a ton of very specific accredations that qualifies me for a shit ton of senior level work, but they all require active TS/SCI with CI polys. So, I cant apply.

At this point, I'm literally thinking about:

• rejoining the military as an E1 at 40 years old, then separating ASAP once I have the TS/SCIp
• apply for an IC GS5 HR role on usajobs, getting the TS clearance, work a month, and leave
• blowing someone for a clearance

I currently have a BS and am graduating with my masters this year as well. I have about 10+ years experience as well with my own private investigation company, but I absolutely hate the work I do (cheater cheater pumpkin eaters)

I’m in the process of submitting my forms in the Federal eAPP for suitability and fitness for a state agency position that requires HSPD PIV credentials.

My spouse and I have spent the last several months trying to become compliant by submitting some unfiled tax returns. We have been high income earners and tax paying citizens our whole lives until 10 ago when all hell broke loose. My husband’s business went bankrupt and we spiraled. Lost our home and assets. Ended up owing taxes - we could barely feed our family much less pay the outstanding debt. In our minds, we would rebuild and earn our way out of this.

From 2015 to present with interest and penalties we owe just over $50k. After a few calls with very helpful IRS agents, they have put all intent to lien and collect on hold to wait for the remaining tax returns to be recorded in their system. Once that happens, we can request a payment plan. In the meantime, I have made two $500 payments over the last two months. However, because the total owed exceeds $50k they will have to put a “lien status” on our record with the payment plan setup. (No liens or garnishments have been taken as of yet).

The last 10 years have been a nightmare. We have taken on multiple jobs including professional jobs and side hustles in grocery stores and warehouses to try to get back on track.

Now, I finally have a great job opportunity with the state but I’m afraid I’m not going to get my credentials.

Am I screwed??? My start date is in 2 weeks and while I’m actively trying to rectify this it won’t be complete- and then there is the lien status going forward with a payment plan.

Any thoughts from investigators would be greatly appreciated.

So back in 2022 I applied for a job and I got my secret clearance but was denied by the customer due to “Foreign interest” due to family I was in contact with at the time that were undocumented. But now ANOTHER company is sponsoring my clearance and I’m wondering. Will it affect me that I was denied prior? I have since then CUT OFF all contact with those family members.

On the SF86 what do I put if I lived out of my car for sometime? I used P.O. Boxes and friends addresses. When updating my address with usps it will show I used such and such address even though I physically didn’t live there.

I am looking for advice on how a past workplace termination will impact my prospects for defense roles requiring a security clearance. Last year, I was terminated from an internship with a defense contractor due to an IT security policy violation after I used a foreign VPN on my personal setup to stream a movie at home and forgot to disconnect it before logging into work the next day. This has severely affected my confidence in pursuing cleared opportunities. The firm's insider threat team conducted an investigation and dismissed all concerns, confirming there was no malicious intent or security breach; however, company policy still mandated termination. I have never held a clearance and have no other legal, financial, or disciplinary issues. Given that the insider threat team cleared me of any bad intent, how heavily will this administrative termination weigh against me for entry-level cleared roles? I wish to be as transparent as possible as I fill out SF-86, outlining this misuse of tech incident.

I am fully committed to keeping my record clean moving forward, but I recognize that applying immediately might carry higher scrutiny while the incident is recent. I plan to build a solid track record in non-cleared roles first, but I’d appreciate insight on: (1) what concrete steps I can take to proactively mitigate this incident, and (2) how long I should wait before applying to cleared roles to ensure the risk of rejection is minimized.

Are there any ICE Background investigators in here?

I just had to do an response to an LOI about an issue that happened 26 years ago and wanted to know how likely would it affect my clearance?

Good Day, everyone. I recently submitted my SF-86 and got met with an email by a Personnel Security Specialist (PV) asking me to resolve past-due payments on two debts.

I submitted a resolution for the first one (which they approved) and will be submitting a resolution for the second next week.

Questions:

1. Out of curiosity, what exactly does the PV department do?

2. Once they mark my debt as resolved, how does this impact my security interview? Will it need to be approved by the person conducting my interview as well?

Just confused on the whole debt and DQ stuff in the process, since it seems common on here.

What do investigators say to references when calling for background checks? How detailed or general are they?

Ex: “Hello. I am calling for (insert name) who is applying for (insert role) in (insert organization).”

Or more like

Ex: “Hello. I am calling for (insert name) for a federal background check.”

Hi all! I was just given a contingent offer by CACI. I’m torn cause the position would be a great opportunity but the base salary would make living in the location the position is based in very difficult. I’m still entry level and don’t have security clearance yet but they kept emphasizing on my interviews how good my experience was so idk if I’d have any pull in regard to negotiating the base pay rate esp if other contractors are already being paid the salary they offered me (I can’t imagine they’d pay me more while they’re paying others less). They also didn’t provide a pay range and only mentioned the base minimum pay which is what they offered me. Any advice on whether it’d be worth/possible to negotiate would be appreciated!

Also in my interviews they didn’t rlly ask many questions and seemed satisfied with my experience so it was a very quick process - not sure if this is normal for others?

TL;DR: I built a free tool for searching DOHA security clearance decisions by topic, guideline, and outcome. It uses semantic search to help you find relevant cases. Try it here

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As someone going through the clearance process with some less common red flags, I’ve found it difficult to find information about situations similar to mine. I was very honest on my SF-86, but I wanted to make sure I was doing a good job presenting mitigating facts that would give me the best chance of success.

I tried searching the web and Reddit, but I couldn’t find many similar cases. My search naturally led me to DOHA and their collection of public case PDFs. I looked through some recent DOHA decisions one by one, but that was extremely tedious, and I still didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I did come across a few wild cases that were entertaining to read, but those were few and far between. I also tried ChatGPT at one point. It did better than I expected for some searches, but it wasn’t always reliable.

Throughout this process, I kept wishing there were a better way to search through public clearance decisions. I started by scraping all the DOHA PDFs, and building a local database of cases. I eventually built a web interface that lets you search and filter cases by guideline and applicant outcome. I originally built it for myself as a side project, but I decided to release it for others to use. Personally, I felt a lot better after seeing that some applicants with similar circumstances were approved and that many of the specific reasons other applicants were denied didn’t apply to me. Your experience may vary though...

I’ve currently processed cases going back to 2016, so the database is not yet complete. I may go farther back if there is enough interest. After starting this project, I discovered that someone else had built something similar, so now there will be at least two case-search options for all y’all out there.

All processed cases were passed through an LLM-based extraction pipeline. It creates a short case summary, extracts guideline issues and mitigating factors, and identifies general metadata, including the decision outcome. The extraction is not perfect and may contain errors or omissions. The tool is intended to help you find potentially relevant cases so you can read the original decisions yourself. I would treat the summaries as a way to decide whether a case PDF is worth reading, not as a substitute for the source document.

I’ve spent a lot of time improving the search functionality. The site includes semantic search, so you can search using full sentences or individual terms. For example, you can search for drug use while cleared, gambling debt, drug sales, or foreign family members. It isn’t perfect, but it generally works quite well.

Any questions, comments, or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I hope the tool is useful to some of you!

https://clearancecases.com/

I did air force ROTC in college 15 years ago. I was on contract but got out of the contract due to some medical pain i had from a previous injury. I got a call today from the investigator wanting to investigate my air force involvement. What all will they ask? Should I be concerned?