No, it’s not a new hip hop song title.
Rap Back is short for “Record of Arrest and Prosecution Background.” Some state-level criminal justice agencies have had Rap Back programs since 2007. The FBI introduced their Rap Back service as a part of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) system in 2014. Prior to the FBI deploying Rap Back, a national criminal history background check provided only a one-time snapshot of an individual’s Criminal History Record Information (CHRI). The FBI’s Rap Back enables authorized agencies to receive ongoing notifications of any CHRI reported to the FBI after an individual has been enrolled in the system.
In October 2018 the FBI’s Rap Back service became available through the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM’s) National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) to federal agencies for the Continuous Evaluation (CE) of personnel with security clearance. Over the next few years, the Department of Defense and other agencies that used OPM/NBIB and now use its successor agency, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) as their Investigation Service Provider (ISP) for background investigations, gradually enrolled cleared personnel in CE and the FBI’s Rap Back service.
Here’s how it works. When a person is arrested and booked by a law enforcement agency, the booking information is forwarded to a state-level criminal records repository and to the FBI. The booking information includes fingerprints. The FBI checks the fingerprints against existing records. If the fingerprints match the record of someone enrolled in their Rap Back service, the FBI automatically sends an electronic “Rap Back Activity Notification” with the recent arrest information, to the agency that enrolled the individual.
If DCSA enrolled the individual, DCSA’s Vetting Risk Operations Center (VROC) would receive the Rap Back Activity Notification and determine whether the information was previously known. If the information was not previously known, VROC would create an Incident Report using the new information provided by Rap Back. This would appear in the individual’s Defense Information Systems for Security (DISS), security clearance database record, as an Incident Report created by VROC CE. The Incident Report would then be adjudicated by the DCSA Consolidated Adjudication Service (CAS), which could take a few weeks or several months. During adjudication, the CAS could require the individual to respond to a Supplement Information Request (SIR) or Interrogatories. The CAS could request a limited investigation (LI) to interview the cleared individual regarding the arrest, obtain details and disposition of the arrest from police and court records, and interview one or more knowledgeable individuals. The CAS could issue a letter of intent to revoke clearance with a Statement Of Reasons (SOR) with or without an SIR or LI.
A criminal arrest is a potentially disqualifying condition for security clearance eligibility under Guideline J of the National Security Adjudicative Guidelines—NSAG (SEAD 4). Guideline J—Criminal Conduct reads:
- The Concern. Criminal activity creates doubt about a person’s judgment, reliability, and trustworthiness. By its very nature, it calls into question a person’s ability or willingness to comply with laws, rules, and regulations.
- Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying include:
(b) evidence (including, but not limited to. a credible allegation, an admission, and matters of official record of criminal conduct, regardless of whether the individual was formally charged, prosecuted, or convicted.
Although it doesn’t happen very often, at any point in this process the CAS could suspend the individual’s eligibility for access to classified information (security clearance). If the CAS does not suspend the individual’s security clearance, the individual’s Security Management Office (SMO) could suspend his/her access to classified information.
Here’s an example of a timeline for FBI Rap Back report and a resulting SOR (there was no SIR or LI in this case):
- 01/08/2021: Subject arrested and booked by a local law enforcement agency.
- 01/27/2021: VROC created CE Incident Report based on FBI Rap Back Activity Notification.
- 09/07/2021: DCSA CAS issued an SOR citing Guideline J—Criminal Conduct.
- 01/13/2022: Subject submitted a response to SOR.
- 03/07/2022: DCSA CAS favorably adjudicated the Incident Report based on the SOR response.
In the past few years, the Government has placed greater emphasis on the self-reporting requirements in Security Executive Agent Directive 3 (SEAD 3). One of the self-reporting requirements in SEAD 3 is arrests. Failure to timely self-report an arrest could foreclose the use of “voluntarily reported the information” at paragraph 2(f)(1) of the NSAG as a potentially mitigating condition for the conduct.
Although it hasn’t happened very often in the past, when a cleared person fails to self-report an arrest, it is possible that in addition to Guideline J—Criminal Conduct of the NSAG, the CAS could raise a secondary security concern under Guideline E—Personal Conduct or Guideline K—Handling Protected Information. Guideline E states: “Conduct involving questionable judgment, lack of candor, dishonesty, or unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations can raise questions about an individual’s reliability, trustworthiness, and ability to protect classified or sensitive information”—a potentially disqualifying condition for security clearance eligibility. Guideline K also makes “any failure to comply with rules for the protection of classified or sensitive information” a potentially disqualifying condition.
In the timeline example above, it was less than three weeks between the date of the arrest and the date of the VROC CE Incident Report. As others have advised, it’s important for cleared personnel to self-report an arrest to their security officer as soon as possible, regardless of how minor the offense was. It’s usually best to get out ahead of issues that are potentially disqualifying for security clearance eligibility. This also applies to other security issues like financial problems, foreign involvement, and misuse of information technology. Had the person in the timeline example immediately self-reported the arrest and provided his version of the events before DCSA VROC received the FBI’s Rap Back Activity Notification, there was a good chance he could have avoided the SOR. If he provided detailed information to his security officer with a copy of the arrest report, he probably would have also avoided an SIR or LI.
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William H. Henderson is a former Army Counterintelligence Agent and a retired federal clearance investigator. In 2007 he began helping clearance applicants from the pre-application stage through representation at hearings and appeals. Since 2012, he’s been the Principal Consultant at the Federal Clearance Assistance Service (FEDCAS). His two books on security clearances have been used at five universities and colleges, he’s contributed scores of articles to ClearanceJobs.com, and he’s been retained as an expert witness in several state and federal lawsuits.
