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.

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 ...