2 Issues I don't know if I should bring up/explain while getting first clearance

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

Hello,

I’m going for my first ever clearance while doing work at an IT Company. I have been working towards Cyber Security for awhile and just got a job in the private sector, working for military industrial types. Forgive me for being vague about it. I have worked for YEARS to get to this spot. I’m very fortunate to be where I am in life, but I’m nervous that one of these two things are going to ruin my chances.

I noticed about a year ago that my email appears in a darknet market database leak. Before you assume whatever you might assume by that, I have no idea why it was there. I did not sign up for it, or anything. I do remember getting a couple of weird emails for password resets, and some strange activity in my google dropbox (this was in 2014) but I didn’t think anything of it at the time and changed my password. I actually lost two past email addresses from this time period to hackers also. I went to haveibeenpwned.com and saw that I was a part of some leak. I removed it about 6 months ago but now I’m wondering if I need to bring it up or what.

The other thing that happened, and also please don’t assume - I had an ex girlfriend get vindictive and lie about me. She said I committed all sorts of really bad sexual deviant acts, to the extent that my ex wife, who doesn’t like me, stuck up for me. My ex girlfriend thought that my ex wife would have joined in on the lie, and the ex girlfriend also has a sordid history of doing things of this nature. She wrote about 1000 emails to me with all sorts of threats and awful things that I showed the police, who didn’t charge me with anything and closed the case.

So with these situations in mind, I’m prepared to volunteer this info if I need to, but I genuinely did not do anything wrong and don’t want to create any doubt for any reason. I have two kids and have put the last 10 years of my professional life working towards this goal. I’d ask the people who just hired me but I’m not sure how to bring it up.

Thanks in advance.

2

We don’t expect perfect people, but we expect honesty, transparency and integrity. Without context and hearing your side of the story, these issues can be significant and could lead to disqualification.

Now before you start heavy breathing, be honest. Even if you don’t think we will ever find out, we usually do and if you weren’t honest when you had the opportunity to do so it will look quite negatively upon you. Be honest, explain everything. Don’t leave your investigator to have any questions. On your SF-86 there is a section for optional comments, don’t type a book but put some context in it.

Be honest, have people who are aware of these incidents if possible as the investigator will want to talk to them to confirm your side of the story. I don’t know if I said it but be honest and as long as everything “checks out” you’ll be fine.