My husband retired in March 2017, at the time they were reviewing his clearance. Since he was retiring he didn’t worry about renewing it and his Chain of Command agreed; Honorable discharge, no trouble, etc.
Fast forward to this month. He is working for an overseas contract company (has been since March). They are needing CAC cards for all employees. They submitted my husband’s and were told that it was revoked or denied in 2017.
This is the 1st we have heard of this. He is currently out of the US and has limited phone calling abilities, so I have been trying to track down who to contact.
I have emailed DODCAF and was told that his Unit or Company Security Office are the only ones who can request info. (WTH?! It’s HIS record). My husband sent that email to his employer and they responded with:
They spoke to a LTC S-2 at SATMO and were only told it was revoked or suspended. And seems as though that’s all they are going to do. Despite of course saying “we will help you get this resolved” earlier in the month.
Does anyone know WHO to actually contact?
Can he be told WHAT supposedly happened to revoke/suspend his clearance?
Has the DOD started a new policy recently that requires ALL Civilian Contractors to attain a Secret Clearance?
Thanks in advance for any help & insight. I am pounding my head against the wall.
When you are within a year of retirement from the military or DoD civil service, the government will defer renewing your clearance and allow you to retain classified access so in reality, he probably didn’t have the option to renew. Semantics but more on that in a moment.
CAC Cards for contractors: No, all contractors don’t require a “Secret” clearance but anyone who requires a CAC will require a favorable investigation of some sort in the past. If the employee did not have a two year break, they can use a previous investigation to approve a CAC. It’s a bit more complicated than this but for the sake of simplicity CAC requires T1 investigation which is the minimum, Secret requires a T3 and TS requires T5. If you have a favorable T3 or T5, but only require a CAC you’re still good to go. In the case of your husband, his investigation was revoked or denied so he does not have a favorable investigation to issue the CAC from. The bad news, if there was not a 2 year break in service, the system will not allow you to resubmit a new investigation. The good news is, if the contractor is working for the military, they (the military) should be able to order his previous investigation and still issue the CAC.
What is confusing, is you mentioned he did not renew his clearance because he was retiring. This makes me wonder if his clearance was revoked for some reason or another as you typically get denied on an investigation or re-investigation. If this is the case, he should have an idea why it was revoked. Really, he should have an understanding if it was denied. Google 13 Adjudicative standards and see if a life event for him fits that list.
As far as his records go, google DoD CAF Freedom of Information Act request. You should be able find how to submit and request all investigative records. He should do this even if the contractor works out the CAC issue.
A few years back I was working for a contractor and I was in the middle of a periodic update for TS/SCI. Yada yada yada my previous SBI was over five years old.
Got assigned to a new project with a different customer requiring only a Secret clearance. Initially they refused to issue a CAC because of out-of-scope clearance… even though that contract only required Secret and my investigation would have been within scope for Secret (over five years old but less than ten).
Fortunately our security officer was able to straighten it out. But there are indeed problems issuing CACs.
When the US held company’s Security Manager seems to have a “I don’t give a crap attitude if it gets fixed or not”, then the wife had to step in and say wtf dude!
Thanks, was able to review the 13 Adjudicative list & was able to talk to the other half today in the phone.
Here is the only thing that we can come up with. Around 2013 we had a financial hit & almost lost our house. He volunteered to do 2 back to back deployments (ARNG) and it saved us from losing everything. So our 2013 credit report is horrendous.
When they were doing his security clearance late 2016, they were using the 2013 credit report and refused to investigate a newer version that shows a much better image of our financial history. I am guessing the refusal was Unit level, but I forgot to ask the other half.
Between his Active Duty time & ARNG time he had more than enough to retire early. So instead of arguing with them he submitted his retirement paperwork. Hindsight, should have fought it. Who would have thought he would ever need a CAC again in his lifetime?
Prerry sure we solved what caused the denial/revoke, whoo hoo!
Now, can it be fixed or at least request a review?
I don’t have specific knowledge regarding what you can do to fix this, but I can tell you that I have see individuals obtain a new clearance after having previous instances of revocation/denial. If the revocation was due to the financial issues and those issues have since been resolved, then the reason for revocation doesn’t really exist anymore, thus he could theoretically be eligible for a clearance again. Obviously it is a bit more complicated than this. I would definitely exercise his right to FOIA and obtain a copy of the investigative report. If his last investigation occurred in 2016 and the financial issues were of adjudicative significance, then some sort of follow-up should have been conducted to confirm whether or not the financial issues from 2013 where still an ongoing issue.
