Author Archive

Marko Hakamaa

Marko Hakamaa served in various military police positions with the United States Army worldwide for 22 years before retiring in 2006 as a Master Sergeant. Afterwards, he transitioned into the civilian workforce as a contractor background investigator for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) before entering civil service as a Security Specialist in 2009.

Security Clearance Denial

The total number of Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) security clearance denials involving alcohol consumption went down from 82 in 2022 to 69 in 2023. In most cases, the use of alcohol concerns was added in with other adjudicative guidelines such as criminal conduct or illegal drug use. However, on

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Security Clearance Process

In 2018, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law, enabling those undergoing background investigations to keep a credit report security freeze in place without any impact to completion of the investigation. At the time, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provided guidance to all Federal agencies

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Obtaining Security Clearance

There were only two Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) cases involving the Allegiance guideline this year. This one involved a DoD contractor who had shown a more than passing interest into the anti-establishment conspiracy theorist group called QAnon, and militia extremists who call themselves Three-Percenters (III%). He was

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Security Clearance Denial

Every once in a while, I run across an appeals case that makes me shake my head and wonder why on earth they tried applying for a job that required a security clearance. This particular one takes the cake. The applicant was initially denied clearance eligibility by the DoD based

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