Contractor Caught in 20+ Year Lie About Military Service

A DoD contractor who had a security clearance for ten years was caught lying on his SF-86 when he was asked to fill out a new application in order to enroll him in Continuous Evaluation (CE). A review of the SF-86 is done to determine if any issues are present, and if not, the investigation is deferred and the applicant is enrolled in CE. In this case, the reinvestigation was not deferred and the applicant underwent two interviews with a background investigator. During the first one, his military service never came up and he did not volunteer it. In the second, he was queried about why he had not listed any military service on the form or his bad conduct discharge from the Navy in 1997. Pulling on this thread started to unravel a far larger issue; he did the same thing in 2007 when he was first granted clearance eligibility. The case summary doesn’t go into details as to how he managed to dodge the military service issue, but back then checks of military records were done by hand and not a database query.

The contractor was denied continued eligibility for a clearance by the DoD and subsequently appealed to the Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA). During his hearing, he confessed to the conduct that led to his discharge and admitted he intentionally did not disclose it on two separate investigation applications ten years apart. Despite glowing evaluations and accolades from supervisors and managers, they did not seem to be aware of the reason for being denied a clearance which did not provide credibility with the DOHA judge. Citing a continued lack of candor on his part, the judge opined the contractor had not mitigated the falsification concerns.