Comment by eob
16 years ago
> He then got out a blank form and handed it to me, saying ``Here, fill it out again and don't mention that. If you do, I'll make sure that you never get a security clearance.''
That sentence perfectly sums up my experience with the security clearance process and demonstrates clearly how broken it is.
In all fairness this was a particularly special case. And from a long time ago, way past the time anyone would be worried if he really had been a spy for Imperial Japan.
This happened in the 50s probably so it was after the war. Also the fact that he was 12 at the time obviously meant it was just a ridiculous coincidence. If he really was suspected of being a spy, the security officer wouldn't have torn up form and would have actually made him never be able to get a clearance again.
What has happened is that the security officer simply knows how the system is set up. It cannot handle 'ridiculous' spy stories. It can handle 'no spy stories' or it can handle 'real spy stories' -- ridiculous coincidences don't fit it. So he basically had forced his guy to lie because his story fit better into 'no spy story' bin.
This is true of bureaucracies in general. They each have a number of pigeonholes they want to put people in, and the trick of dealing with them is to decide what pigeonholes they have, decide what you want to be regarded as, and taylor your answers accordingly.
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That's a fair point, hga.
The larger problem with this process, I think though, is that it isn't one governed by a clear set of rules. They tell you "list everything" but they don't actually want to know everything, so they end up making you erase some things from the form.
Why do you have to erase them? Because you can't get cleared if you list them, but as long as you've verbally come clean they make a run-time decision not to care.
I think this is a bad way to go about the process because it introduces the whims of your investigator as a factor in the process.
If the system has bad rules on the books, we should fix the rules rather than instructing security investigators to make run-time decisions to bypass them.
I think any process involving humans will be imperfect. There will always be the potential for loopholes.