Marko Hakamaa

The financial section questions on the SF-86 are very clear, yet applicants still choose to ignore or not disclose all of their delinquent debts – even when they know they will probably come to light.

It’s rare that decisions made by DOHA judges are overturned, but this is exactly what happened when a man’s clearance was revoked due to $121,000 in delinquent debt.

In his appeal before the DOHA judge, the applicant claimed he didn’t understand that what he was doing could throw off the polygraph results – but then eventually recanted his testimony and admitted to trying to manipulate the test.

Incidents or behavior don’t just go away once they’re adjudicated favorably. Just because something didn’t affect your security clearance in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t affect it in the future.