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

As an add-on to the article “DSS Looks to push through the Security Clearance Investigations Backlog” posted by Lindy Kyzer on our main site, here are a few other reasons why some background investigations are moving at slower than a snail’s pace. Back in December of last year I posted an article about

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Security Clearance Denial

A contractor employee working for the Department of Energy had his security clearance suspended because he was caught viewing pornography at work on his government computer. After an administrative inquiry was conducted by the local security office, it was determined that the employee had been viewing sexually explicit material at

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Security Clearance Denial

In one of the more unusual security clearance denial appeals I have run across, a DOE applicant successfully pled his case in front of the judge after explaining the circumstances of why he failed to list his military service in the Army from 1978-1984. He also had to explain why

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Security Clearance Process

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who retired last January, stated in a recent interview posted on NextGov that “the clearance system we have is broke”. I am sure many of the current clearance holders and applicants would agree. Some of the issues Clapper identified have long been the bane of

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