Your security clearance access is usually removed if you’re not currently employed by the federal government or supporting as a defense contractor. Access to classified information is always assigned to a position or contract – once you leave the organization, your security clearance is gone too, right?
Aside from whether your clearance is active or current, once you quit a company, you should be debriefed – because one top secret is never equivalent to another’s (you’re not accessing the same “need to know” information).
However, one ClearanceJobsBlog subscriber thinks they were “active” six years after leaving a position:
“I just found out that an old employer reported me as active TS/SCI for six years after I left the company. During those years I traveled a lot overseas and even got a foreign citizenship. Obviously I didn’t report any of this since that job was long over and supposedly my clearance was gone.
I found out about all this when I just started a new job which transferred that clearance over. Can someone tell me not to worry about this? Haha”
After six years, this security clearance holder/applicant should have applied for a new clearance. It’s unclear if the new employer was truly able to pick up the prior clearance, or simply see the individual’s record in the Defense Information System for Security (DISS).
One background investigator on the thread notes, “It sounds like your prior employer may not have taken you out of DISS and de-briefed you, so you appeared to have never left. That’s not on you, just report to the FSO those activities and they’ll send it into CAS under self-reporting.”
Aside from reporting the company/FSO, you can gather your own documentation which will likely come up with all of your travel and foreign citizenship (application for dual citizenship, alone, is not disqualifying for a clearance—but that’s not the end of the inquiry). Note when you left the company, any communications you had with HR/your FSO, your dates of travel, and any other supporting documents as you will likely be questioned further.
Has this happened to you, or someone you know?
Much about the clearance process resembles the Pirate’s Code: “more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” This case-by-case system is meant to consider the whole person, increase process security, and allow the lowest-risk/highest-need candidates to complete the process. However, it also creates a lot of questions for applicants. For this reason, ClearanceJobs maintains ClearanceJobsBlog.com – a forum where clearance seekers can ask the cleared community for advice on their specific security concerns. Ask CJ explores questions posed on the ClearanceJobs Blog forum, emails received, and comments from this site.
