Several Security Clearance Questions

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

Background: my wife just graduated from a bachelor’s degree program and is going to be applying for a secret clearance and an interim clearance prior to starting. I was hoping to get some advice about the 3 scenarios below:

  1. During school, she had to quit her job because the hours wouldn’t be flexible enough for her engineering degree and classes. We also had several negative life events come up including her step-dad passing away and supporting her mom all on my income. I did as well as I could but was late on a good number of payments, including this year. For the form I think she can put mitigating factors, including that we have been working with creditors to get extensions or settle, she will be starting a job with a 100k salary to pay remaining things off quickly, there were unavoidable life events (death, loss of job, etc.) I’m also worried about the interview that there are a lot of details I took care of for her, and that she needs to study and get back up to speed on things that I was handling. I don’t want her saying “I don’t know” to be a negative impact.

  2. She used CBD Oil (0% THC) as directed by a doctor for stress. I know that you can’t guarantee that it’s actually 0%. When she started reading about clearances towards graduation and getting this offer, she stopped use ~1 month ago. I’m hoping that if she discloses this and the circumstances it won’t be an issue, just looking for feedback.

  3. My dad (her in-law) lives in upstate New York and has a girlfriend in Canada. Every day he goes to work in the US then drives to spend time with her. While this isn’t illegal per se, I think it seems very suspicious. She has effectively no contact with him and has only talked to him once in the past 2 years. Is anything regarding that situation cause for concern?

2

Why isn’t she the one asking the questions instead of you? Seems like you take care of too much for her. Won’t work like that in the cleared arena.

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I was primarily handling finances while she was a full time student and she doesn’t know about the issues with my dad, so I was really looking for a constructive answer on how much these are an issue, not a critique of a situation you don’t really know about.

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So maybe you should tell her so she isn’t blind sided during her security interview.

Canada is one of our closest allies so its not a big deal, especially since its your dad’s wife.

Cbd isn’t illegal to govt inless it has thc, she only knows what she is told on tjat end (no thc). That wont be an issue.

The only possible issue is debt but if you are paying it then it looks good but its up to the adjudicator. Since its not a TS, its not as strict but still important.

She should keep applying at different places public and private. Just because she was offered a position, doesn’t mean the background investigation wont take months or even a yr especially now with funding being cut for various programs and agencies.

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Thanks. She knows about all of the situation, it just idk if they would ask “why was this particular account late on July 2021” or something which would be hard for anyone to remember