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

Time and time again I run across background investigation applications where the applicant listed criminal charges that are contradicted by the FBI criminal history check or police report. This is a serious mistake! It seems, either consciously or unconsciously, applicants try to downplay the seriousness of the reason(s) for the

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Career Advice

The DoD and the Intelligence Community seem to be suffering an uptick in the number cleared employees or contractors who are at the center of news stories about leaking classified information, falsifying documents, providing false statements, and generally engaging in unethical behavior. A few weeks ago we heard about the former

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Security Clearance Denial

I have noticed a common thread among many of the case summaries written by Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) judges when explaining the board’s rationale for upholding the initial denial or revocation of an applicant’s eligibility for a security clearance. Before I get to that, here is a

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Security Clearance Process

During a recent Defense Security Service webinar DoD policy experts acknowledged the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) has made little or no progress to clear the current background investigation backlog inherited from OPM’s Federal Investigative Services. New approaches called “Lines of Effort (LoE)” are in the works.  Here is a

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