I vowed that I would set aside the whole security clearance investigation since I don’t have any direct ability to impact it either substantively or temporally. I had the three-hour interview and there was an immediate flurry of activity thereafter. Friends, colleagues, neighbors, employers all received visits and/or calls from a diplomatic security investigator. All reported that the interviews appeared to go well and that things were moving quickly. That was over a week ago. Since then, there’s been, well, nothing. The target date for completion of the security clearance investigation is July 14th, two months after the Office of Personnel Management opened the file. Surely, my file will go quicker than the norm. I’ve lived in the same house for the last decade. We’re financially stable. No crimes other than a couple of speeding ticket (“really, officer, I don’t think that’s possible … this Saab can’t go 110″). Even my foreign contacts are all upstanding law firm partners.
Alas, I could not resist calling the “Office of Personnel Security and Sustainability’s Customer Service Center” to get a status update. After a couple of tries, I got a live human being who informed me that my investigation was underway and that my target completion date is July 14th. In others, no change. I’ll retake that vow not to call again until after July 14th. I give it a week, at best…
I don’t feel particularly old, but I woke up this morning to my 20th father’s day. No more infant head-butts, toddlers jumping on the bed, or pre-teens bringing a tray with burnt toast and runny eggs. These days, my neediest child is our 12-year-old labrador, Sprocket, who insists on waking us up early and moping around until we walk her for a few miles.
Our kids all have milestone birthdays this year: 16, 18, and 21. With two still at home (at least for another month before Zach heads off to Temple University in Philadelphia), we spent the day in San Francisco. We started with brunch at Farmer Brown’s, a fantastic soul food place in the Tenderloin focused on locally produced, sustainable ingredients. The carb-fest father’s day brunch buffet included fried chicken, pancakes, eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits, gravy, fruit, and sweet potato pie. The live trio provided musical accompaniment to the usual Harris family banter at the table.
After staggering out of the restaurant, and a short call with my eldest son in Maryland, we walked over to SFMOMA and spent a few hours wandering. I found the Robert Frank exhibit to be absolutely inspiring. I’ve thought a fair bit about taking my cameras with me in the foreign service and doing a lot more street photography.
After the museum, we came home to open some presents. Per tradition, presents consist of books. This year’s selection focus on the upcoming career transition, including Africa, Altered States, Ordinary Miracles and Summits, Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century.
In all, it was a really relaxing day. Happy father’s day to all.
It sounds like Diplomatic Security has completed all of the local follow-up interviews for my security clearance. The neighbors have been canvassed. The “persons who know me well” have been debriefed. Employment contacts for the past 10 years have been interrogated. Photography and legal volunteer positions have been verified. There have been no family interviews, but it sounds like they assume that wouldn’t provide much dirt so why bother. The local investigator had a pretty full plate, dedicating most of the week to tracking down people I’ve crossed paths with over the last decade. From the bits of feedback I’ve received, it sounds like things are progressing well.
It is a very strange process to have life be in limbo, with such monumental change on the horizon, without any concrete expectation of timing. Judging from those posting on the Yahoo! A-100 boards and my progression, I have a guestimate for the near-term future, but it could be off by as much as a year so it’s tough to get too far ahead of myself. The security investigation should finish up somewhere between mid-July and mid-August. Apparently, diplomatic security no longer provides feedback via email to let a candidate know when the clearance investigation is complete. There is a number to call for an update so I’ll start doing that in early July, once every 10 days or so.
After the investigation concludes, approximately 80% of candidates go through something called adjudication. Presumably this is a review of one’s security file by a panel to determine if any red flags rise to the level of concern such that State should withhold a top secret clearance. It is unclear how long this process takes, but it appears it can be a few days, a week, or longer. I’m learning quickly that the answer to just about any question related to the Foreign Service is “it depends.” Once I clear adjudication, diplomatic security will issue the top secret clearance (again, no notice unless I call and ask). There is then one final step: the suitability review. This is a relatively short review of the candidate’s entire file and one last chance to be dinged for any reason. Although some see that step as a 48-hour-long formality, there are certainly some who have jumped through every hoop, received a medical and security clearance, only to see the Foreign Service dream crash and burn at final review. Some suitability reviews have extended for weeks, whether because of administrative delay or because of some substantive issue. There is an appeal process, but it’s a long shot.
After clearing adjudication and final review, the candidate’s name is finally entered in the Register. I applied as a political officer and thus would be put on the Register for political officer larvae awaiting “the call” in order of oral assessment score. I scored well with a 5.7 but do not have any extra points (+0.4 for critical need language fluency, +0.17 for world language fluency, additional points for military service, etc.). It sounds like, however, the 5.7 will put me high enough without additional points that I should receive an offer soon, if not immediately, after my name hits the Register. State is really ramping up its hiring given the Obama adminstration’s emphasis on diplomacy and Soft Power. State offered the A-100 entry classes in some years past only a few times a year, but they currently schedule them every 45 days or so. There is one class scheduled to start in early September followed by another in late October. Because there are no classes in November or December due to the holidays (no breaks during the 5-week intensive course), I’m guessing/hoping that I’ll be a member of the October 2009 or January 2010 class.
Once a candidate passes the written exam, the QEP, and the oral assessment, State provides congratulations and a conditional offer of employment. There are still two more hurdles to clear, however, before one is officially listed on the register. After much prodding, nine viles of blood, and unspeakable other testing, the medical clearance process is now complete for me and my family. I received my certification for worldwide service on June 2nd. Thus, the final hurdle is the top secret security clearance.
Every foreign service officer deployed in the field must have a TS security clearance. While many of a foreign service officer’s duties are routine, particularly in the first couple of years, often they involved the use or production of classified information. State indicates that the clearance process can take anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years, depending on the individual case.
The process begins with the fingerprinting immediately following the oral assessment. The handful of us that survived to the end of the day were still a little loopy from the good news while we waiting to be fingerprinted and processed. It seemed odd to go from the stress of the day-long test to the exhilaration of passing to what felt like being booked before a night in jail.
After the requisite week to transfer paperwork and fingerprint cards across the street in D.C., diplomatic security takes over and runs a series of database checks. They run everything they have (which is a lot): financial credit, FBI, etc. Once they have the reports, a lead investigator sifts through it all, along with the candidate’s responses to 90+ pages of answers to questions on the security clearance application (the SF-86), and produces a memorandum. The memo outlines areas that require clarification, interviews that need to be conducted, and any additional areas for investigation. The lead investigator then assigns out all of those tasks to field agents around the world. The team can be as few as a few people to a dozen or more.
I received a call on Friday from a local investigator who said he had been assigned to conduct my in-depth interview and we arranged to meet at my house this morning. We ended up sitting down for over three hours at the kitchen table with my dog standing guard (OK, she was probably just waiting to see if perhaps we were going to eat something and drop some crumbs on the floor, but comforting nonetheless).
Despite my active imagination, it was all very routine stuff. We walked through each of my responses to the SF-86 written application and I provided contact information for some additional references. It looks like they need two references for just about anything I’ve done over the past decade and once used for one purpose, the reference cannot be used for another. There wasn’t much that needed in-depth explanation (reward for living in the same house for a decade, maintaining a monogomous 23-year marriage, having stable employment, etc.). I explained why I took a new last name days after my 21st birthday (my wife and I both changed our names … long story) and never bothered to get a court order (turns out, at least in California, there’s no need to — just get a new driver’s license without fraudulent intent and all other forms of identification will eventually be acquired). I explained that all of my “foreign contacts” were former law firm partners. I provided additional documentation of my legal consulting and freelance photography business. I dug up evidence of the name change by providing cover sheets from my 1985 and 1986 tax returns showing the name transition assigned to the same social security number (don’t throw any tax returns away, ever).
In the end, the local investigator was incredibly thorough, but very pleasant, and the process was much less traumatic than the blood draw and other medical tests. Now, we wait for other interviews to go forward….
