THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the r…

Despite being ostensibly narrow, these guidelines are actually pretty broad in scope, & it can be argued that there's not really much of anything that a savvy adjudicator can't fit under their umbrella. But we're not going to talk about that today.

When the government denies or revokes a clearance, it has to issue you what is called a "Statement of Reasons" which sets forth the allegations made against you & explains which of the 13 guidelines they fit under. The most common ones tend to be B (foreign influence), C ...

(foreign preference), E (personal conduct), and F (financial issues). By far the least common one, at least in my experience, is Guidelines A: Allegiance to the United States.

That's because to fall under Guideline A, you can't just prefer another country over the US or be ...

subject to that country's influence, you have to actually do something hostile to the United States, like try to overthrow it by violence or advocate violence against it. I've never personally seen a Guideline A case & most clearance lawyers have probably only seen 1-2 max ...

in their careers; they're that rare.

Remember how broad I said the guidelines are? You can conceivably be thrown under A by being a member of a group that has participated in such activities.

The 1/6 riot featured pretty much every major alt-right group in existence. Which ...

means that it would be entirely reasonable for anyone belonging to such a group to be denied a clearance under Guideline A, whether they were in DC or not, simply because the group they're a member of was a part of it.

There's a recognized problem with members of the law ...

enforcement, military, & intelligence communities being affiliated with such groups. Until then, this was tolerated, likely because at least they hadn't tried to overthrow the government.

My prediction is, we're going to see a lot more Guideline A cases in the next couple of years. Probably more cases in 2021-22 than in the previous 20 years put together.

I'm actually ok with that.

Corollary: People with clearances have reporting requirements for when they do something which would raise an issue OR SEE SOMEONE ELSE WITH A CLEARANCE DOING SO. Not reporting can cost you your clearance.

In other words, if you know someone is one of these folks & you don't ...

tell Security, you might lose your clearance as a result of your silence. Snitches might get stitches, but confidantes don't get clearances.

Want a taste of how agencies view reporting requirements? Watch this epic tour de force of counterintelligence panic propaganda. https://t.co/Toutwg9UFq

I have numerous concerns with this & make my students watch it for discussion purposes, but the bottom line today is, ...

this is how the folks in the Security Office expect you to behave if you have a clearance.

THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.

You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.

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THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.

More from For later read

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THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.

You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.