My first clearance interview, about 10 years ago, it was all going along just fine. I had the standard litany of "bad" things any early 20-something American guy gets into - a few mushroom trips, an alcohol ticket, friends from foreign countries. No deal-breakers so long as you are honest and I answered honestly.

The only stumbling block came when the interviewer asked "have you smoked marijuana?". I truthfully answered no. The interviewer suddenly changed from bored old lady to the hardened, ex-cop that I suspect she was, glared into my soul and asked again. "No", I answered once again. "Well, that does not check out with your background. We will have to ask around on that one." She did ask around, my friends corroborated my story and I got the clearance.

My background involved undergrad education at a #1 party school, in a college town where open marijuana usage was common well before being legalized. And I had casual experimentation with other drugs (the aforementioned shrooms) and plenty of alcohol usage. I was probably the only one in my college acquaintance circle that didn't smoke on a semi-regular basis. I sometimes think I could have lied and said "yes I smoked weed", and still gotten the clearance. It would have actually been less of a red flag for the investigator(s).

This is surprising because it's the exact wrong thing to do. Past drug use will not disqualify you from a clearance, but lying absolutely will. Depending on the clearance level they will interview a number of people, including second degree connections. I know someone who used to be an investigator, and it surprised me when they told me how often first degree connections would say bad things about their 'friend'.

I was completely honest on my form.

E.g. i admitted to drug use, but the firm was so insanely detailed there was no way to be fully honest. It literally asked how many times youve done each drug, who with, whered you get etc. Well for a raging polysubstance addict, this is hilarious. Just listing all the differe t drugs would take more room than there was on the forum and that doesnt even start to account for all the tertiary information they wanted.

I got interviewed of course. Was a very weird experience sitting in an office in my workplace 14 feet from my boss talking about "yeah I did cocain a few times" "why did you stop" "well it feels good but it makes you act brazen, selfish, and flippant. Also it sucks to be around people who are coked up"

Anyway, I got the clearance

My only experience with serious US government forms was applying for a tourist visa. This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US".

Also the entry form they give you on your flight deserves a mention. This one has "did you handle livestock in the last X months" repeated like 3 times in different phrasing. Not as stupid as the first one, but... why? Why is that question that important in the first place? Pest control?

This response is a really bad idea, and I think the security office people that recommend this are actually compromising security by making value judgments about what is and isn't relevant to background investigators based on their own personal beliefs. If this came to light they might get fired, despite it being way too normalized.

The conventional wisdom is to answer truthfully, and justify your answers. You really don't want to get caught lying. It's not up to the person asking you to fill out the form to tell you what to list and what not to list.

If the government can't find enough qualified people they need to adapt the process (and they have). Some things are 100% dealbreakers and should have been changed a long time ago (see local Marijuana jurisdiction laws), but I'm a firm believer you shouldn't lie to get the job. Find another one and move on. My .02.

What would the ramifications be if they ever found out you lied? It’s an innocent lie, but still, I can imagine that lying on these types of forms could turn out badly.

For the written form, I've always been told to be 100% truthful. During the polygraph though I've had several antagonistic interactions similar to yours. Its all part of the game though at that point. They are trying to get under your skin. My personality does not play well in that scenario. Glad to be out of that line of work now, and I generally say no to anyone asking if I'd be open to having a clearance again.

It seems pretty common.

My spouse was considering applying to the Air Force almost 20 years ago (for the language learning school), and got the recruiter very excited after demonstrating excellent scores on the ASVAB... then it all fell apart after they answered some questions honestly about past depression and refused to lie about it on the forms as the recruiter wanted them to.

On a life insurance form, I was asked "Has a doctor ever advised you to stop taking any drugs (including prescription medications)?"

I called up and asked them what to do about this question, because obviously the answer is yes if you include prescription medications. They didn't even understand what I was asking.

Interesting. About 10 years ago I got a job offer from a three letter federal agency that would've required a clearance. I ultimately declined so I never started the process, but I was told that past drug use (weed, at least) wasn't necessarily a deal breaker while being caught lying about past drug was an automatic fail.

Story I was told once was

Feds: Do you use drugs? Guy: Yes. Feds: Do you plan to stop? Guy: No.

The feds went away and conferred briefly and then came back and told the guy that they needed him to at least say he planned to stop, so he said that, and got the clearance.

I still think about a question that used to be on customs forms when entering the United States: "Did you come into contact with any soil while abroad?"

My thought is always, well, the planet I visited is called Earth and is made out of earth, so it's more than likely that I came into contact with soil. I answer "no" anyway, because I feel you're not supposed to answer "yes" to that question, but I couldn't actually justify my answer with a straight face. So far, not in prison! Keeping my fingers crossed though.

I had a different experience, when I was in front of a Defense Investigative Service agent, filling out my forms in 1989, for a TOP SECRET/SCI clearance required for the job I had accepted working for the Defense Information Systems Agency, in the basement of the Pentagon.

I told him that I had smoked marijuana (I was still studying for my degree at University), and that a number of my friends also smoked, and they were the reason why I smoked (peer pressure). I also informed them of the damage I had seen done to our friendships inside the group, as certain friends had gotten into fights with other friends over the money needed to buy the stuff. I also gave names and contact details of various friends in that group. I informed those friends that they would be interviewed, and to just tell the agent the truth -- as I had done.

They all reported back that they had been interviewed, and told him the truth. But they also didn't give me any more details, and I was fine with that.

What was a little strange about that whole clearance investigation process was that the agent also wanted to know the addresses of my grand parents, in addition to the fifteen year history of everywhere I had lived myself. And about a month later, one of my grandmothers got a visit from a Secret Service agent. Turns out that the Defense Investigative Service didn't have any agents in that area, so they farmed out that work to the local Secret Service office.

So, yes -- I did smoke, and I did inhale. And all the agents cared about was whether I was trying to hide something like this, because that would mean I would be vulnerable to blackmail over those events.

My recruiter told me I had to fill out a pre-screening questionnaire. He said “I need all these answers to be NO at the end of this form if you want to join the military”

“So you want me to mark No for all the answers?”

“No. No. That’s not what I said. You should answer all questions with the proper answers. All I’m saying is I need these questions to be NO if we want to proceed”

I read between the lines and everything was no. When I went to MEPS, a processing stop where you get physically and mentally cleared to join, he told me to not admit to smoking weed. When we got into the room at MEPS, they said if you used drugs and we find out and you didn’t tell us, you can go to jail for 10 years, etc., so I raised my hand and told on myself. The whole drive home my recruiter was like “why didn’t you just say no?”

When I eventually got to my first command, an investigator came to speak with me about my pending clearance. She said they found some discrepancies, I told her the recruiting story. She asked if I’d be willing to take a polygraph. I initially accepted but then asked if I was required to. I wasn’t and if I didn’t want to do a polygraph I could instead do a sworn statement which I did. Eventually got my clearance but it took a long time.

>"Here, fill it out again and don't mention that."

>I had the exact same experience when applying for a clearance while I was in college

Speaking as someone on the autistic spectrum, this is why the entire clearance process is a joke and has been since I had the misfortune of meeting some of these spooks as a child.

They claim that the one thing that will preclude you is lying, but obviously as posts like these demonstrate, that's not the case.

I still remember going on a date with a woman who was recently divorced... she told me about traveling up and down Baja California for RAND (smoking her brains out along the way).

I've met a ton of these people -- they'd have been precluded from federal employment back in the day just for being divorced... or a woman... or a myriad of other things... but somehow they manage to get these cushy roles and cling to them.

I've since quit doing any job interviews... at all. I got the sense folks were treating them like free consulting sessions, so I'm very purposefully showing up in the comments when something comes up in the news and refusing to "stop posting".

At the end of the day, if you "do a clearance", you're helping perpetuate war crimes, and it's been that way since Iraq, arguably as far back as when the draft ended.

(I got the sense they, the royal they, "the feds" were aggrieved I kept applying to the agencies in my hometown, but hey, I was born here, and I'm not required to ignore antisocial behavior. It's not my fault if it begins to look like you're abusing someone you met as a child -- denying them employment in the private sector then overpolicing their applications in the public service)

You got off easy. I once had to apply for a clearance for an admin assistant position, coming out of college (which was certainly overkill; I never once came into contact with classified material, with the closest I ever got being walking past the building's one-room SCIF while seeking signatures for textbook order authorizations). When I got to that question, I truthfully answered that my single brush with mind-altering substances had been an edible a peer had passed me, after he realized that I was having trouble relaxing during a particularly difficult time, senior year. Back in then-present day, my boss had gone over the application, tsked, asked why I'd mentioned it, tsked again, and said that it was too late to remove, since she'd already seen it. It was sent off without another word.

My reserved, nerdy self was replacing her bubbly English major bestie, so I don't think she liked me much from jump, anyway.

I was proactively instructed by an O-6 (full bird colonel) to lie on my application about drugs if I had ever used them. Without even asking me if I had ever used drugs, he said, "I don't care what the truth is, on the form you put no." This was probably 20 years ago; I was pretty young.

This is a common one. You try something in the same year you (unknowingly) need to apply for a clearance.

> Before an entire local FBI office spent even a day on this case (let alone 6 weeks), maybe they should have asked some of those professionals to look at the supposed "Japanese code key" page?

That sounds far less exciting than scrambling to find a fifth columnist and potentially being hailed as a hero.

It’s important not to fall into the trap of hindsight. At the time, they very well thought it was important, but it of course seems silly once you hear the full story.

This was a code key, not a codified message, so there was nothing to break, but only the indication that messages could have been exchanged using this key.

I don't understand your point here. He lost the cypher itself, not an encrypted message. So the code breakers would have said: yep, that's a cypher alright, it can be used for anything by anyone.

Being at war, you want to make sure it's not an enemy using the code.

>If it turned out to be a known code that (say) Canada used for low-security consular messages, that'd quickly narrow down or close the case.

It was made up by the two kids, so maybe they did that but it didn’t narrow down their case…

That was Hoover's FBI, the peak of hunting for anyone suspected of being a communist, gay, dissident, or anti-segregationist.

Well maybe the local office didnt have anything else to do. So they followed this lead as a top priority since they had no other leads.

Money would be spend on the wages of those agents anyway, even if they had nothing to do.

I can't pretend to know what the original test writers had in mind. However, I actually think this question serves a different purpose than to determine if you had actually considered stealing from an employer. These types of questions are better suited to determine if someone can walk the corporate walk and talk the corporate talk. They don't want a low level employee to go off on a customer, or make rude remarks, or otherwise say "between you and me, fuck this company lmaoooo", because that opens them up to litigation. On that front, I would say they achieved their goal.

The _obvious_ answer to this question, if you want a job, is "no". Anyone that answers "yes" is a liability, regardless of their actual intention to steal.

> My mind never stops and there's virtually nothing in the world I have not "considered"

One piece of advice my mom gave me which I always follow is: don't tell them (a company/job/boss) anything that could be used against you. There's no need to be truthful here, this isn't a consultation with your doctor. So lie, tell them you're healthy, you never had any problems with anyone ever, never admit to anything. Truth is for your doctor or your therapist (and your mom!).

(There's also a fun related video that sometimes makes the rounds, "never talk to cops" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE). I suppose it's specific to US law, but I find it interesting nonetheless).

I'm like you. An ex of mine claimed that most people never even think about committing suicide. It's hard for me to understand how anyone could avoid such an obvious thought, but I have since seen a lot of evidence that some people's minds really don't explore the possibility space, and when they do it's only along prescribed paths... So I guess it's possible?

I would think that you have been using the word "considered" rather lightly. To me, it means careful thought and deliberation, not just "the thought crossed my mind at some point".

When I was in the security clearance process, the first step in the process was a 500 question multiple choice psychological exam (randomized order). The test is designed to have some level of error checking to make sure participants are taking it seriously (e.g. questions that would be expected to correlate). Near the start of the exam was a question "do you have back pain", I answered "no". Near the end was the same question phrased slightly differently, I answered "yes". When in my subsequent interview to discuss the results, the interviewer questioned why I didn't answer consistently. She seemed to accept my answer of "I had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 2.5 hours by the time I got to the second question".

In a similar vein... while driving down the road, have you ever "considered" just pulling into the opposing lane? I'd never ever do that, but I've considered others driving into my lane, which leads me to consider myself doing that to their lane.

Lots of other similar "I'd never do that" situations I've definitely considered.

I admire your honesty though. 99% of people would lie.

I had to write a letter in support of my immigration application, explaining my situation and circumstances.

I gave it to my attorney and she read over it and handed it back to me. "You already have an attorney. My letter will read like an attorney wrote it. Yours should instead look like a human wrote it."

Many people use "considered" to actually mean "seriously considered acting upon", rather than "idly considered hypothetically" in this context.

Plus when screening many applicants with few differentiators, this might be an easy question to reject on.

On the word “consider”: A friend of mine tells a story about his dad and his appreciation for the practicality of a brick house.

Someone once asked him “Would you ever consider putting any other siding on your house besides brick?”

His answer: “I’d consider it. And then I’d brick it.”

> What mental fences do you have that you have never "considered" such an obvious course of action in the likely billion of seconds of thinking?).

Honestly I think it may just be semantics. When I think about the usage of the word "to consider," there does seem to be two different and distinct meanings. When people use it in the sense of "to consider a course of action" it actually has a different meaning than when the same word is used in other contexts.

> how do you block & limit your mind? What mental fences do you have that you have never "considered" such an obvious course of action in the likely billion of seconds of thinking?).

I don't think people block their minds. I think they just lie on forms more. I also sometimes struggle with which lies are expected.

This gave me a good chuckle, and definitely speaks to the imprecision of language and how shared cultural context and understanding does a lot of heavy lifting. Context and understanding that everyone takes for granted but may not be apparent to some, even those in the culture.

Almost certainly HR and your therapist were not interested in every infinite possible though you may have ever had, but whether it was something you seriously considered or planned and may have even made intent towards actually completing.

> but I genuinely don't understand people who have "never considered" it - how do you block & limit your mind? What mental fences do you have that you have never "considered" such an obvious course of action in the likely billion of seconds of thinking?).

Having an intrusive though pop into my head ("You could totally just jump in front of the train!") is not the same as actually considering the steps towards actually planning suicide. I have had intrusive thoughts, but I would say I've never "considered" suicide.

Instead, the companies want people willing to lie on forms.

> "Have you ever considered stealing from your employer?" to which I would cheerfully answer "Yes".

I absolutely do not mean this as an insult and I a honestly curious, but could you be chance be on the autism spectrum? I know I am, but not so much that I don't know that you must lie to that question. Though I did have to learn the hard way that you should not tell romantic partners that you wish your loud neighbors would die, because it would objectively improve your life. Or like when we learned about illegal slash-and-burn agriculture destroying the rain forests and hurting the global climate and I asked my teacher why the government wouldn't just shoot the farmers, to his intense horror and revulsion.

> but I genuinely don't understand people who have "never considered" it - how do you block & limit your mind?

I fully agree and think the same way, but neurotypical people generally scare away from thought experiments that make them uncomfortable because of their, as you said, mental fences.

that's how i knew 'voice stress analysis' tests were trash. when i was a teenager, it was all the rage for companies to put candidates through these and i'd sit there lying all the way through it and still get the job every time.

now, any of my ex's can agree, i'm the worst liar in the world and if that test thought i was being honest, there's definitely something busted with it.

One book that describes these tests, and how they've come to dominate low-level jobs is titled Punching In [0]. The philosophy is that what sort of personality that would be successful at, say, Home Depot, would be completely different from American Eagle. At many retail companies, you cannot get into the payroll system unless the personality test system approves your application.

My experience with the same sort of personality tests that you've described is somewhat similar. When trying to get hired (I was desperate for anything at that time) at WalMart, the personality tests seemed to ask 3 basic questions - but about 20 different ways to approach each question - (a) do you get into fights at work? (b) do you steal? and (c) do you care if your boss steals?

0: - https://www.amazon.com/Punching-Frontlines-New-Brand-Cultu-e...

There's a difference between thinking about something and seriously entertaining it. Like you, I think about a lot of things, but I'd take "considering" to mean more than that. I've thought about all kinds of ways to commit fraud, but I'd never consider doing it. I think you've misunderstood the word in context.

A retail company that I worked for (I worked in the general office and we got a bit of a chuckle talking about the test) had a test that was very much in the same vein - though it wasn't a "have you ever considered" but rather put on a "agree to disagree" spectrum.

    It is ok to get into fights during your break as long as you aren't at the store
    It is ok to take office supplies home if they aren't valued more than $10
    It is ok to not clock out for a smoke break if it is less than five minutes long

There were other questions that were ones you were supposed to agree with too - just those weren't as memorable.

Apparently, there were people who failed the test.

The other part of the test is that it is on record. So when someone does get into a fight during their break the GM can pull the test out and say "see, you knew this."

just be very careful with how you respond to questions from a therapist. they're "legally" required to report certain things. You have to know, what you're allowed to say and what you're not, if you don't want govt institutions getting involved.

Personality tests aren't about a test of your personality, but your ability to project the ideal personality for an employee. That has some value because it shows you'll know how you're supposed to act on the job.

I think the question is used to weed out those people who do not want the job. It is a synonym for “so you want this job?” What mental fences do you have that prevented you from interpreting the question correctly, or that encourage you to self-sabotage (assuming you needed the job; if you knew you didn’t want the job, the question provides an easy out)? Or not, I dunno you nor what the test designer intended.

People are using a different version of 'considered' where it's not just a passing fancy, but something you would be likely to do.

Did you methodically weigh the pros and cons of stealing from your employer? Was there a real possibility that you would have emerged from the consideration having decided to go ahead with the theft?

If not, what you're describing sounds like "theft ideation," which I'm sure employers wouldn't be thrilled about but wouldn't warrant a question on the application.

I think you're misunderstanding the difference between answering questions truthfully and how your answers are received.

I mean, there's a whole book that's popular dedicated to saying "yes" to every opportunity you're offered to improve your "luck"...

Probably because you were overthinking it.

You're thinking in terms of grey while they're testing to ensure that you have at least a basic understanding of black and white.

Mindfulness meditation may help calm the racing mind.

"It apparently didn't occur to them that if I were a real Japanese spy, I might have brought the glasses with me from headquarters."

I'm not a criminologist but I think they might have classified the glasses and the glasses case and maybe found enough evidence indicating that the glasses have been made in the U.S. or maybe even in San Diego.

Even if they didn't, then it's still their job to do exactly what they did and they were successful. They found the real owner of the glasses and were able to confirm, that the person isn't a potentially dangerous enemy spy. That case can be closed and they can do something else.

What makes you think that type of thing is old school? This kind of brute forcing is still very much in use [1], but usually we are better at having computers do a lot of the filtering these days.

[1] - https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/white-sedan-police-found...

Third of all, it's the government's own fault they lost their mind over a child's toy.

> "Have you participated in overthrowing a government?"

This must be an awkward question for Iraq War veterans.

Yep that's a favorite US government method. They do the same with the form you have to fill out to buy a gun.

I never understood the legal justifications for that. If i answer a visa-related question now, the context for me is the present and past. How can laws cover retroactive lies that were not lies at the time?

Coming from Australia, you have to answer a small selection of those questions (including those ones) on the visa waiver application just to travel to the US for a holiday or business trip.

Sometimes you just can't win, though.

I used to work for a Swedish company making training simulations for surgeons. There are of course special rules regarding customs declarations of medical equipment.

Our salespeople often complained that when entering the U.S. it was basically a coin toss if the customs agent would be angry with them for declaring our simulator as "medical equipment" and wasting their time, or get angry at them for trying to sneak this medical equipment through customs without declaring it.

Last time I was at the doctor, I answered “not that I know of” when asked if I had any allergies.

Afterwards at the pharmacy, it turns out my prescription included a box of antihistamine.

> My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere

This might literally kill her.

He wasn't investigated by the FBI. The FBI was investigating a hypothetical Japanese spy; since he wasn't a Japanese spy, any follow-up that led to him was merely incidental.

If the FBI investigates a spy seen driving a silver Honda Civic with license plate ABC-1234, and looks into an unrelated civilian who drives a silver Honda Civic with license plate ADC-1234 in case their witness misremembered the license place, that doesn't mean the unrelated civilian was "investigated by the FBI".

I kind of _hope_ any statutes of limitations would have expired 35 years ago for events then 45 years ago. There's not much point in retaining liability for events that long ago; it's not like you'll ever catch the "crooks", nor likely have the ability to really judge events reasonably anymore by that time.

'course, with the general urge to be "tough on crime" and the inevitable occasional horror-story of truly heinous behavior discovered many decades later there probably isn't a lot of political will to support reasonable statutes of limitations, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of this stuff never expires.

The event happened 80 years ago. I don't know what the statute of limitations is here, but I would guess that it's passed by now.

Edit: it's a story from 1988, so at the time it was only 45 years ago.

Or maybe get a life and go catch actual spies. When the law makes innocent suffer fuck it.