There's a lot that I could comment on since my last post, but I'll just make this quick with a couple points of clarification.

on checkers --  I don't believe they are accusing me of not being candid on this issue.  Again, it was said in the context of things that are not serious crimes, not crimes at all, but things that someone could possibly view in a bad light.  There were 0 questions I didn't answer regarding my checkers game.  I believe the only thing I was really asked was whether or not sex was involved.  I truthfully denied that sex was involved, and the interrogator moved on.

on my work with the Junior High youth group at my previous Church --  You can read the apology letter for yourself -- the questions asked to me were not appropriate.  Furthermore, one of the parents of the Junior High kids is on my SF86.  Furthermore, my polygrapher claimed to have read the account I posted on this website of what happened to me back in 2003 with the previous agency.  Furthermore, when I went above and beyond and mentioned some of the inappropriate questions that were asked to me, my polygrapher agreed with me that they were not appropriate.

The case for my lack of candor is almost non-existent.  I wouldn't be surprised if the adjudicator went after me harder than the NSA polygraph division's technical director would have expected.

I read the apology letter. However, it doesn't go into any details at all regarding which inappropriate questions were asked. But I do stand firm in my opinion that the person sealed his own fate to a large degree when he simply refused to any questions about the time period in question. From reading that letter, one can only conclude that the reviewing authority didn't think the inappaoripriate questions were enough to invalidate the entire clearance process. I'm not commenting here on anything in the pplicants background, except to comment on his decision to not cooperate. If he had issues with what was being requested he should have complied and THEN made his complaints. He wasn't asked to jump off a bridge at high noon. He was asked to discuss certain aspects of his life. While I respect you and your efforts, I don't think you're expecting everyone to simply read this website and accept everything that people post here without being challenged at all, do you? In the unlikely event that you are, your desire is for nothing more than a propaganda board. We all have things in our background that we would "rather not discuss" and depending on the age of the person the more they may not want to discuss. That's reality. But in a security investigation of this level a person must be expected to answer just about anything. That's not to say that those answers should be held against an invidivual. Quite the contrary, it's the honesty and candor that are being sought in most cases. But when the candor is lacking, the baseline of a person's character is at issue.

Onesimus,

I want to pose two questions to you, as a sidenote to this dicusswion:

1) Do you believe you used good judgement in engaging in any type of interactive internet activity with a 13 year old girl?  Notice that I'm not saying or implying you did anything wrong or illegal. The question speaks only to your judgement. I want to reiterate that I don't believe this to be valid reason to deny a clearance, if that's all it was limited to. However, I don't believe, personally, that it's good judgment to do this, given what we know about the ways child predators operate today. 

2) Do you think you used good judgement in telling investigators that you don't wish to discuss the issues they were inquiring about? 

These questions are posed at face-value. There is no hidden implication in this questions except to ask you if you believe your 'judgement' may have been off in certain situations.

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Nevertheless it appears the government does realize there are limits to how it can treat its citizens.

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I agree, but that doesn't mean what I did was wrong.  Standing up for oneself is a good thing.

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This letter was from an earlier agency, which did grant my clearance.

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How many times do I need to repeat this -- The only questions I didn't answer were ones which the government agreed were not appropriate to ask. 

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Nope

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Again, the posted apology letter shows that our government does not agree with you on this point.

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I am proud that I refused to discuss certain issues a second time, and wish I was strong enough to have not discussed them the first time.

quickfix wrote on Mar 26^th, 2006 at 3:32am:


Quickfix,

This may come as a shock to you, but a significant portion of cleared technical workers are avid gamers.  They brag about the computer they built for themselves and how many frames per second they get on game XXX.  And then they talk about playing games online.  You know who else likes to play games online?  -- kids!!  I guess, in your world view, a significant portion of cleared technical workers go home at night and troll for naive underage girls/boys.

Onesimus wrote on Mar 26^th, 2006 at 10:59pm:



Well, here's the deal. Judgement is about making the best choices in given circumstances. You can do things that are legal and not technically 'wrong', and still use bad judgement.  Do you understand that concept? Or is your opinion that if it's legal then it must be okay to do? There are lots and lots of things that are legal, but doing them may not be using good judgement given the conditions and circumstances. Would you agree, or not?

Almost without a doubt, if asked such straight-up lewd and ridiculous questions by my polygrapher I would have ripped the cables/doodads off my body and/or clocked him. 

Good judgment is knowing when to stand up for yourself - on that front, I applaud Onesumus. His only fault was not humoring all the govt's Qs - which I would have done without hesitation - assuming punching out the polygrapher didn't discontinue the application process . 

I said it before, and I'll say it again: stop projecting your insecurities and self-suspicions onto someone else. Normal, well-balanced folks don't think twice when interacting with younger people, teens and so on. My instinct if/when I come upon a 13-year-old in any setting is not "It would be wise of me to avert my gaze and keep my distance, lest I lead others to suspect I am a pedophile." Good lord. Who thinks that way?

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Pity this response isn't longer, as I was looking forward to another 100-line mega-paragraph rife with such gems as "You need a JD and a law license to teach law" and "stick to whatever it is you are trained to do." They say brevity is the soul of wit - you are case in point for the inverse.

My points in the first instance were that some of the folks here were overly fixated on the substance of the issue, which you correctly point out isn't the most important factor in Onesimus's story. I agree (and said) what it comes down to is a matter of apparent honesty/candor. 

My aside on the law - which is wholly valid - was precisely that, an aside to address your laughable remark that Onesimus "did, essentially, plead the fifth because you were not CANDID and UPFRONT with the information requested." That is not the Fifth Amendment. I won't launch into a personal attack here, but let's just say this struck me as patently absurd. 

Note that I did say, and still believe that the case is "much more complicated than we - possibly he - knows." Security clearances - which I ***assure you*** I know a great deal about - are complicated matters. The "whole person" idea is about considering everything and reaching a fair disposition. That's why certain bars can be overridden in time (some people are told to apply in 5 years, 10, etc).

"Pure hyperbole to mask your ignorance around the issue." Not even sure that makes sense, but I see what you're driving at. Again, it isn't the issue - but you and your ilk keep coming back to it and making it the issue, using different covers. Poor judgment, lack of candor, etc. 

As for "positions of trust" and popping someone who calls young girls at my place of worship sluts or anything to that effect, please don't be daft. The most important suitability criteria for "positions of trust" is - you guessed it, trustworthiness. Can this person be turned? Does he have a character flaw that can be exploited (drugs, sexual deviancy, etc). Not, "does he have a temper." 

I'm purposefully vague about who I am and what I do, and I intend to keep it that way. But I will say this: many of the best folks I know (who are also ***not*** strangers to "positions of trust") would have reacted the same way. It's almost a virtue in some way - after all, they're not diplomats - but executors of the law and protectors of the state.