I’ll try and make this short and easy. Long story short, I joined the AF in 2009 did a background check for a secret security clearance, the investigation started in May 2009 and ended in June 2009. In JPAS my status said “pending”, now the crazy part, fast forward 7 YEARS!!! I got orders to Alaska and they found out that my clearance was still pending. A lot of calls were made and basically somebody didn’t do their job and my adjudication was put on hold. Apparently they found something of question on my background ,but I never got an SOR and my interim never got revoked. However, they never resolved my clearance before separating from the Air Force 2 years ago come April 2019.
My question is, since it was in a pending status (the investigation was already done back in 2009) will my clearance file be erased or removed from the system? or will it basically remain in limbo until it picks up sponsorship? Also, after 2 years will it go away and I’d start a new one or once again will it just remain there until resolved.
Much Appreciated…
Wow. I worked Personnel Security in the AF for many years. That is truly a wow. You will need reveal you were submitted for a clearance in 2009. I see many DoD with a 1 month approval. Allowing you access to classified on a daily basis while in the Air Force? How many units did you work at? Each one having its own Industrial Security office? Security Police/Security Forces used to own the function, but in 2004 or so it was moved under the Secretary of the Air Force and those functions reported to separate chains of command. I believe it may have rolled back now. Too many people should have checked your clearance status along the way and dropped the ball. So fill out the SF86, tell them you were in the AF and cleared, working every day. I assume you have EPR’s to validate that. Tell them you thought you had a clearance, and they may tell you it wasn’t there. I really do not see this happening. I processed revocations in the military. At least one unit along the way would know you did not have a clearance. We spent hours at classified meetings vetting clearances on an alpha roster in the analog days.
I served in several different units and went through about 3-4 different security officers. Every single one of them would constantly put in for updates, but the CAF would never get back to us or they would tell us, “It’s coming any day now”. I basically served my whole 8 years on an Interim clearance and in my last year, my commander finally revoked it. We spent my last six months in the AF trying to get the CAF to resolve the issue. I got my honorable discharge and am now graduating college and have a possible position at a defense contractor so now I’m getting worried cause it never got resolved. At the time of separation, my security manager sent me this:
SSgt,
After several inquiries into the status of your case, I was notified on 27 March 17 by a DoD CAF Section Chief that it was highly unlikely that they would have your case adjudicated by your ETS. At that time CAF was waiting on a response from OPM related to your case. The DoD CAF official advised that both OPM and CAF would lose jurisdiction on the day of your ETS and their authority to continue processing your case would terminate.
V/R,
Maj
Pretty wild story…
I would not fear not ever having it adjudicated. Apply for jobs, fill out the paperwork, explain you had an interim that never rolled over to full clearance. DoD dropped the ball on a lot of clearances, letting many go well beyond scope. As these fine folks separated or retired, they had no clearance to cross over. It can be a minor item that held it up. So there isn’t necessarily an issue on your end of the table to worry about. Walking in off the street it will take about 18 months to get a TS SCI with Poly complete. For my client 8 to 12 months to get a Secret. So don’t interpret the lag in time as meaning you have a defect. If you did you would be well aware of what that issue is, and 4 years later it would be mostly mitigated. From one AF person to another…thanks for serving!