wrote on Oct 17^th, 2013 at 1:52am:

Sorry to hear your story.  Which agency did you apply to?  Was it CIA? I am a CIA reject.  I got the Conditional Offer of Employment (COE) and then "failed" my polygraph during my 3-day processing at the CIA Dulles Discovery Building (13900 Air & Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly, VA).  I got a certified letter a couple of months later saying I had been "denied access to classified information" and my COE rescinded.   I had a security clearance, have never been arrested, no criminal record, no drug issues, no foreign contacts, no security violations.  Yet, I'm some sort of security risk? I went ahead a filed a Freedom of Information Act / Privacy Act (FOIA/PA) request, which came through with a copy of my background file.   There wasn't much there since the CIA didn't run my background check yet for my clearance.  All I really got was a copy of my SF-86 security clearance form and a completely censored copy of my polygraph report (the report was essentially blank pages with my name and occupation on the header, the polygraph info was redacted).  I requested a "review of the decision", hence an appeal, and it took 2 years before I heard anything.  My appeal was denied.  I was granted one final appeal which was also denied.  No surprise.  I have never heard of any applicant for the CIA successfully appealing their negative polygraph result.  It screwed my cleared career for a while but I eventually got hired by another agency and got my TS/SCI clearance, no polygraph needed in this case.  The polygraph is garbage and they accuse EVERYBODY of something, usually crime or drugs or foreign contacts, to see if you'll confess to something they never would have found out about in the first place.  They have to reject a certain number of applicants to prove that the polygraph "works", which is doesn't.  You just drew a bad straw.  As did I.  Sucks for both of us.  I compare polygraphers to psychics, mere hogwash. I would suggest you file a FOIA and appeal the decision, as I did, but don't expect anything.  Forget about it, and move on.  The appeal doesn't cost anything and at least you'll have on record that you did appeal and completely disagree with their decision.  That is the only advantage of appealing.  You can still have another good cleared career without these polygraph-agencies.  As for re-applying, I don't know.  I haven't found any stories online about people getting hired by the same agency that rejected them previously due to a failed poly, but I'm sure it does happen.

I'm curious: Did the CIA conduct a field BI on you?
If they didn't, that might be the reason why you were able to subsequently obtain a TS/SCI clearance at another agency. It's been my experience that security clearances (or denials) do not "transfer" across different agencies. :-/