Recently a Department of Defense (DoD) civilian contacted me seeking help in answering an SOR. I asked him to send it to me. I told him I’d look at it, and if I could help him, I’d send him a proposal. What he sent me was an SIR (Supplemental Information Request), not an SOR (Statement of Reasons). If you’ve ever seen a SOR from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), there’s no mistaking it for anything else. The title of an SOR for military personnel and DoD civilians appears prominently in all capital letters and underlined, “STATEMENT OF REASONS (SOR) FOR JOHN Q. PUBLIC, 123-45-6789,” at the top of the document.* The SOR is enclosed as an attachment to a DCSA memorandum addressed to the individual, advising them of DCSA’s intent (preliminary decision) to deny or revoke their security clearance. This DCSA memorandum is referred to as a Letter of Intent (LOI).
Many cleared individuals and clearance applicants have heard of SORs, but if you’ve never actually seen one, it’s not difficult to mistake a DCSA SIR for an SOR. When a DCSA adjudicator does not have enough information to grant/continue a clearance or to issue an SOR, they can use an SIR to request information directly from a military service member or DoD civilian, rather than having an investigation opened or reopened for the additional information. For DoD contractors, DCSA or the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA) issues written “Interrogatories” for the same reason.
I’m not aware of any agency, other than DCSA, that uses the term, Supplement Information Request or SIR. Other agencies use terms like: Request for Information, Request for Further Information, Letter of Interrogatory, and Letter of Inquiry. Similarly, many federal agencies don’t actually use the term, Statement of Reasons, in their letters notifying an individual that their security clearance is being denied or revoked.
DCSA SIRs look similar to LOIs that accompany an SOR. They’re both attached to memoranda addressed to an individual’s Security Management Office (SMO). The SIR and the LOI themselves are also in the form of a memorandum, but addressed to the individual. Both have receipts that must be signed by the individual and returned to their SMO. The SIR requires that the receipt be signed, dated, and returned within 30 days of the date of the SIR; whereas, the SOR receipt must be signed, dated, and returned no later than 10 days after the individual receives it. Both the SIR and the LOI/SOR ask the individual to respond to security concerns or questions DCSA has about the individual’s clearance eligibility.
DoD Manual 5200.02, Procedures for the DoD Personnel Security Program (PSP) uses the initialisms SOR and LOI, but does not use SIR. At Appendix 7C, paragraph 1.c., it uses the term “Interrogatories:”
In circumstances where an investigation report received by the adjudication facility contains insufficient detail to favorably resolve potentially disqualifying information, the adjudication facility may (without re-initiating the investigation) acquire additional information about the individual such as obtaining a medical evaluation or using interrogatories. A copy of information acquired by the adjudication facility will be forwarded to the ISP and appended to the investigative record.
Except for issuing an SOR, there is no other reference in DoDM 5200.02 about adjudicators obtaining information from an individual after receiving potentially disqualifying information. The paragraph quoted above has been applied to completed initial investigations, periodic reinvestigations, Continuous Evaluation (CE) Alerts, and Incident Reports.
To confuse matters, DCSA will sometimes issue a CE Alert to an individual’s SMO rather than issuing an SIR. The SMO in turn will forward the content of the CE Alert pasted into a memorandum or an email addressed to the individual. The memorandum or email might be sent directly from the SMO to the individual or go through individual’s supervisor, with a subject line of Request for Information or the individual’s name. The individual will have to return a signed and dated acknowledgement of receipt to the SMO within a few days and will have 30 days to provide a detailed response to their SMO that addresses the security issues cited in the CE Alert. The SMO then forwards the individual’s written response to DCSA. Receiving a CE Alert is no more or less important than receiving an SIR.
Responding to an SIR (or CE Alert) should be given as much attention as responding to an SOR, especially if the individual’s access to classified information has been suspended and/or the individual has been placed on leave without pay. A well written SIR response with strong supporting documents could result in an early favorable adjudication of the security concerns. A poorly written response with few supporting documents will often result in the issuance of an SOR and further delay case resolution. As with SOR responses, individuals should immediately decide whether to engaging profession help in preparing an SIR response—time is of the essence. The individual will have a little less than 30 days from the date of the SIR to sign and return the SIR acknowledgement of receipt to their SMO. They should delay signing the receipt as long as possible. This will give them more time to prepare their response, gather supporting documents, and possibly take action to mitigate the security concerns. Once they sign the receipt, they will have 30 more days to prepare and submit their SIR response. It may take two or three months before DCSA decides to favorably adjudicate the matter or issue an SOR. During that time the individual should be preparing for the possibility of an SOR by taking additional steps to further mitigate the security concerns and gather more supporting documents.
* This describes DCSA SORs issued to military service members and DoD civilians. A DCSA SOR for a contractor employee looks different. It will have a boxed legal style “caption” at the top with the applicant’s name, an ISCR Case number to its right, and centered on the page just below it the words “STATEMENT OF REASONS” underlined in all capital letters.
Copyright © 2025 Federal Clearance Assistance Service. All rights reserved.
