First FSP - Need Some Guidance

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
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I’ll start off by saying I’m brand new to all of this stuff, and had no clue what to expect going into this besides what was given to me via email.

Long story short, I took my FSP today and feel like I really screwed it up. On my SF86, I put that I had some infrequent alcohol usage (am under 21) and that I had never used marijuana before. I shared the same info w/ my investigator and things seemed to be going pretty smoothly.

Well, going into the FSP, I still was confident in my answers and felt like I had nothing to hide. Before the interview started, I let the Investigator know that I had been offered a vape before (2 or 3 years ago so the details are pretty fuzzy) and didn’t exactly know what was in it, although I did know that the person who offered it to me was a marijuana user. So, we get to the exam itself, the Investigator notices that my “results are consistent with potential deception” for the hiding usage of illegal drugs question which was really starting to freak me out since I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I’m not (and still am not) confident that what I was given was marijuana but after he started grilling into me about it (and I eventually told him that the person who gave it to me was a marijuana user) he got me to confess that was more likely than not that I did use marijuana.

Anyways, at the end of the test he didn’t tell me that I failed (midway thru he said at that point I was “failing” before my “confession” but didn’t explicitly tell me that I passed or needed to reschedule either) but seemed to shift his mood a decent amount after the whole confession thing. I was told by the people at the front desk that my info would be sent to “QA” which seems like a normal thing.

Now I know the whole point of these things are to intimidate people into confessions and that’s exactly what happened, but I feel like garbage because I went in there with the genuine mindset that I had nothing to hide and left woried that I either may not proceed at all or will have to go back in for another polygraph.

Anyone been in similar shoes or have advice to share? Sorry for making this so long I just didn’t expect things to go the way they did.

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Sorry you had that experience. My only advice is to never make any confessions, which you did. That’s the cardinal rule, not trying to make you feel like crap after a crappy day. You are now on the record admitting undisclosed drug use, thats not a good look…

If you get another poly, DO NOT ADMIT OR CONFESS TO ANYTHING TO APPEASE THEM. Harder than it sounds, as you now know. Keep your head up, hope for the best. Good luck!

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Polys suck, but sounds like you got through it. Keep your head up.

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Concur. You gave him the scab to pick…he picked till it bled. Once they get in your “do loop” well they are in your head. I was confessing to shoplifting flower seeds from the front of a shopping cart, age 3 and taking government pens home from work. Why? Because I could not honestly say I never stole anything. Now, if you have not yet, stop association with known users, decline invites to places people likely use, leave when you become aware of it. That and age plus if it was more than a year ago…are powerful mitigation to a potential denial. So if denied, speak to each point they make and efforts to mitigate, plus declare “no future use”. At your age experimenting is the norm. But time to put youngster life behind.

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