DOE Contractor with Multiple SSNs and Names Denied Clearance Eligibility

There are some security clearance appeals where you just gotta shake your head and wonder “what was this person thinking trying to apply for a cleared position?”. This particular Department of Energy (DOE) contractor appeal case is one of those. It goes to show that there are some people out there that just don’t have the critical thinking skills to use logic and apply it towards a probable outcome. Here are the highlights:

The contractor was initially denied clearance eligibility by the local security office due to concerns revealed in the background investigation related to him having used multiple names without using legal means to do so. He also used multiple social security numbers and was married to two different women at the same time. His explanations to the appeals judge about why he had used four different names and two different social security numbers interchangeably was so convoluted I could barely follow along.

Regarding his being married to two different women at the same time, he claims that his first marriage deteriorated and found out the state where they were married did not have a marriage certificate on file, so he thought the marriage was not official. He then married a woman he had met through a long-distance relationship and got married in the overseas country she was living in. He referred to it as a “mock wedding”, and when the second wife sent him their official marriage certificate, he realized he had been “forced” into marriage to her. Afterwards he then officially divorced his first wife and remarried the second wife in the U.S.

To top it all off, he also lied about the circumstances of his military court martial, subsequent two-year tour in federal prison, and discharge. At the court martial he was charged with bigamy, false enlistment, possession of false documents, maintaining false identities, unreported foreign travel, and making false official statements. He pled guilty to all of it and spent two of the three years he was sentenced in prison. There were also some issues raised on foreign bank account transactions but these were not included in the final opinion. In the end, the judge determined in this case, the Bond Amendment still applied and the individual was disqualified from holding a clearance.