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 Process

In June the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) jointly issued a memorandum implementing interim measures to help reduce the investigation backlog for DoD. This memorandum instructs the Defense Security Service (DSS) to defer submission of Tier 3 (T3R) and Tier

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Security Clearance Denial

In the contractor industrial security world Facility Security Officers (FSO) are the primary interface between the U.S. Government and companies that are given access to classified information. As such, an FSO’s integrity and trustworthiness should be above reproach – and when faced with ethical dilemmas, they should act first and

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Security Clearance Denial

I ran across a recent Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Hearings and Appeals case that made me scratch my head and ask “What the heck was she thinking?’ This one involved a DOE contractor who was completing a master’s degree program related to her job that was paid for

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Security Clearance Process

As another part of the shift from decades old practices of reinvestigating security clearance holders every 5 or 10 years, the DoD will focus on beefing up IT systems and resources that will continuously scour open-source data for information that may indicate problems. New applicants still have to go through

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