Secret clearance is just a new unknown so likely more stressed than I should be. For secret clearance do they actually contact ex spouses? I know they “can” do anything they want but do they actually contact people including references? If they do contact people is the scope usually 5 or 7 years that they actually go back? I don’t like the idea that I will have a vindictive ex spouse knowing what I’m doing since I haven’t even been in contact with her for 6 years (I was plaintiff in divorce). On a side note, will investigators take whatever one person says or your history and divulge that information to another reference? Here is a plausible example - If person had a bad review/conduct warning at job A back in the day, would the investigator tell job B that the person had that bad conduct review at job A hoping to get more info from Job B? I.e. do investigators tell other references bad things they hear about you along the way? Could be anything, even something an ex spouse says for example.
Since I already answered your first question in your other post I will just focus on the second question. Investigators do not tell sources what other sources say. We are not authorized to divulge any information about you. We can only ask questions and report the information. The only person we can tell information to is you. There are certain situations where we may need to schedule another interview to confront you with information developed to obtain further details. In that scenario we would tell you what information was developed so it can be discussed. That is the only time we tell information to anyone. Other than that, the information is just gathered and put into your report. Outside of the confrontation scenario described, we cannot tell you any other information regarding your investigation and all other information would have to be requested through a FOIA request.
You’ve been extremely helpful in understanding the process. You said the investigator cannot share info among references. Is it the same for previous universities? Can investigators say to an attended grad school that submit had connect issues at undergrad, for example? Even if it’s relevant can they divulge that kind of thing or only information gather like you said? Is it the same for jobs too? We were talking about references so I wanted to see if the same is true for all entities. Thank you’
Everybody is either a source or subject. If it’s not your investigation (subject) then you’re a source. Information cannot be shared with a source.