After I got that pretty much squared away, in February I learned that my wife had not paid our federal taxes in five of the last eight years. Needless to say I was not pleased. Not at all.

Anyhow, bottom line, I contacted the IRS and we got all of the returns filed and paid in full. There are not, nor have there been, any liens, etc., against any property, bank accounts, or anything else. Everything is supposedly squared away (according to them, anyway).

My BI was supposedly initiated last week. The natural question is, will either of these issues affect me being granted the clearance and therefore getting the job?

Thanks.

Sorry, but the rest of your question is outside my area of knowledge, so I can’t provide any useful info. Perhaps someone else on this blog has some insight.

Average processing time for non-issue cases for TS/SCI ranges from about 3 to 6 months depending on the agency involved (according to government figures). However, I don’t believe these numbers. NRO is claiming that their end-to-end processing for the top 85 percent of their TS/SCI cases in FY07 was 35 days.

There is nothing you can do about things others say about you, regardless of whether or not it is true. If incorrect information was relied upon to make an adverse decision, then you could rebut it through the normal rebuttal process. When someone provides unfavorable information, it is standard procedure for the investigator to pursue the issue and attempt to corroborate or refute the information through other sources. Uncorroborated non-record information should never be relied upon by an adjudicator to deny or revoke a clearance.

The only time an adjudicator should reach back to an old report is when the original clearance was issued with an “exception” or when a issue surfaces during a new investigation that should have been covered in the prior investigation. Unless an old issue involves “foreign influence” it will probably have no effect on a future SCI eligibility determination.

If there is a job offer that is contingent on SCI and the spouse still has 1 year remaining to US citizenship, does the waiver process typically add a long time to the normal SCI processing time? i.e. If the boss is expecting work to start after 3 months doing alternate non-SCI projects while waiting for adjudication, is the waiver process most likely going to delay the start of the real work? Is it difficult to get a waiver for a foreign spouse when the applicant otherwise has an exsiting TS SSBI with a very clean background? In this case should the applicant just forget about this job opportunity because of small chances? Or go for it anyway because there is a “reasonable” chance of a waiver?

I wouldn’t contact a congressman until you give your security manager a chance to find out what happened. If the FBI check was not requested last fall as it should have been, then it’s best to just wait. If the FBI check was requested last fall and is still pending and your security manager and/or OPM promises to do something about it, give them 30 days before going outside your agency for help.

Because you are applying for a TS clearance, your investigation will include a Personal Subject Interview—PRSI.” You should prepare yourself for this interview by reviewing all mitigating factors in the Adjudicative Guidelines under each guideline that applies to you including “Personal Conduct” which is a catch-all for multiple minor issues. If an interim TS clearance is important in your case, you should include as much mitigating information on your SF86 as possible, otherwise only mention them briefly and expand on them during the PRSI.

Investigators are required to destroy their field records a certain number of days after they have submitted their report. This is an administrative policy. It allows enough time to insure that the completed ungarbled report reached the “case control” office of the government agency conducting the investigation (not the adjudicative agency). One investigator could submit his report three months before another investigator in a different location. Consequently field records in one location could be destroyed/deleted long before the investigation is completed and sent to the adjudicative facility.

The only people listed on your SF86 that must be interviewed (and there are exceptions to this rule) are your past supervisors. Everyone else is optional.