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.

Background InvestigationsObtaining Security Clearance

I have seen an uptick in the number of cases taken on by Federal prosecutors related to security clearance holders caught lying on the SF-86. It seems that this particular long-standing issue has garnered more attention in the current clearance reform arena and providing false information is being taken more

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Security Clearance Denial

For those that find themselves deployed to a combat zone, take heed in regards to filing and paying state taxes. In a recent Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals case involving state tax delinquencies, the board denied the applicant’s appeal. Here are the particulars of the case:   This applicant was deployed

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Background Investigations

Now that we are in the new fiscal year, the new billing rates for background investigations and various other checks conducted by the National Background Investigations Bureau have kicked in. According to Federal Investigative Notice (FIN) 17-04 issued last March, the costs for all five tiers of investigations and reinvestigations

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Security Clearance Process

For a long while now security clearance reform proponents  have talked about using continuous evaluation processes in lieu of 5 or 10 year reinvestigations to find and weed out those clearance holders who might be less than worthy of having access to classified information. The Defense Security Service (DSS) recently

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