I am a natural born citizen of the United States, both parents natural born, I grew up overseas(Close ally) when my parents moved for work while I was at a very young age. I have been living overseas for 99% of my life, I spent just less than a year back in the U.S. when I was a teenager about 10 or 11 years ago.
I am in the process of moving back to join the Army and I am just wondering how much of a problem its going to be passing a T3 secret investigation now that the Army requires everyone to get secret minimum?
My worry is not being able to get 3 suitable U.S non family references I can write down on the SF86, and I was door knocked by police for political internet posts by police(not US) although it was informal, there is no record of it, and I was never charged, detained, cited, fingerprinted etc, was just a quick chat and that was that.
Bit of a unique one here I know, appreciate any help. Thanks.
My understanding on the SF86, I haven’t read the police section in a while but from what I remember they only care about documented cases involving police/courts, like charges filed, citations, court records(Basically anything thats been documented) etc. If I have none of that, and it was just a short chat with overseas police, do I even need to mention it on the SF86?
There are law checks and other checks done behind the scenes that don’t involve actual arrests or court etc. If you’ve ever had contact with police, even if you weren’t arrested or charged, it will likely show up. Your name can show up in a report because you were bystander or witness and level of involvement isn’t always clear so it has to be discussed.. If you work at a store as a security guard, every time police show up to arrest someone at the store your name shows up in a report, which could be 15 times, and the report doesn’t say exactly why your name is in the report so it has to be discussed.
I can’t say much on how to list foreign police records. I don’t even know if they can check that. What I do know is that they try to check all your foreign contacts and foreign finances and dealings. Even with friendly countries, each of those can take an extended period of time. Be prepared for a possibly verrry, verrrry loooooooonnnng investigation.
Ya, what I have gathered from researching this and from a previous question I asked is its either hard to check police records from overseas or they can’t and they just check interpol or do a FBI check(which would be done at MEPS anyway) etc. And even if they could pull my record, I don’t have criminal history or really any interactions with police outside this door knock, so it wouldn’t be on a criminal background check which i’d imagine is what they’d be checking if they could check foreign criminal history.
I am pretty confident it’s a non issue for me but you never know. I am more worried about my ability to provide references going back 7 years than anything.
Not having lived in the U.S. for a substantial portion of the past 5 years is a problem (unless you are less than 20 years old in which case it’s only the past 2 years). In order to grant a security clearance, the government must be able to investigate a sufficient period of your recent life. Unless you resided, attended school, and/or worked on a U.S. military base, they will not be able to complete such an investigation. SEAD 4, Appendix C has a provision for an Exception, called a Deviation, to this rule, but it may not be possible to grant a deviation if there is a gap in investigative coverage for 3 or more of the past 5 years, even if they are able to collaterally verify much of your activities overseas.