You could already get a clearance with past marijuana use (and other drugs) but I guess this would just make it so someone couldn't be denied a clearance solely for that reason.
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I got denied an internship at the CIA for my past drug use, which was entirely trying marijuana after it became legal in my home state. I don’t see how someone can possibly be expected to have the personality to gather (human) intel, but somehow not ever have smoked weed.
I think it's because the CIA has been a very self-similar group for decades (Mormons). They have blinders of their own.
I thought it was the NSA that was all Mormons?
tis all of em mang.
It's the entire IC.
Maybe the CIA expects you to be smart enough to lie to them about not breaking the rules to hire you in the first place?
Nope, that's typically a deal breaker. It's the stuff they find out that you didn't want them to know that can get you blocked. The thinking is that if an adversary finds it out, they could use it as leverage against you. I've held clearances in the past and was forthcoming about marijuana use. It largely comes down to the judgement of the investigator. I'm really not surprised that some people have been bounced for drug use and some people haven't.
But the leverage is granted by the CIA being strict in the first place. If it wasn't a condition of denial it wouldn't be a condition of denial and wouldn't hold the leverage power it is meant to curb. Crazy
Good point! I think in the past it would have been a much bigger deal to have past drug use revealed. Think Bill Clinton vs Obama. We've come a long way since, I'm not surprised the IC is just now starting to rethink things a bit.
> I don’t see how someone can possibly be expected to have the personality to gather (human) intel, but somehow not ever have smoked weed.
It's not clear to me how these would have absolutely any relationship at all.
To gather human intel you have to be willing to do things like drink in social situation and (gasp) sometimes do drugs with the people you're trying to collect intel from, to gain their friendship.
In other words, you need to have a slightly adventurous personality.
Most people I know who have an adventurous personality don't smoke weed. Drinking I can see a case for as it's so heavily embedded as a social activity. Just anecdotal data I suppose but I'm not seeing a similar connection for having done drugs.
Perhaps for someone who is undercover and needs to fit in, sure, but I don't think that predisposes a personality to take drugs in their own time. For both alcohol and drugs I doubt it has any relevance to most intelligence roles.
Yeah. And the people you network with in a HUMINT job aren't hanging around doing drugs for the most part. They are working in industry or government. Probably a fair amount of drinking but mostly no time for other drugs, or if they do them, keep it discreet.
Huh, I'd imagine cocaine, Adderall and molly would all be very popular among that crowd.
So, various forms of amphetamines.
How.. mundane.
Half (49%) of US adults have tried marijuana.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/353645/nearly-half-adults-tried...
You're conflating being an intelligence operative with being an intelligence agent. The salaried employees of the CIA (operatives et al) do not "drink and do drugs with people they're trying to collect intel from." They recruit local contacts (agents) to do that for them.
Think: DEA employee, vs. DEA criminal informant. The job of the DEA employee is not to infiltrate drug gangs. It's to organize and monitor the infiltration of drug gangs. The criminal informant wears the wire. The DEA employee sits in the black van outside, listening to the wire.
The most common position in the CIA is "analyst." The job of a CIA analyst is to sit there in a cubicle and read/listen to all the evidence gathered by agents (or spy satellites, or wiretaps, or whatever), gathering any "interesting" stuff into a report (with a further fan-in to "senior analysts" who map-reduce all those reports into "intelligence".) Unlike an operative, an analyst doesn't even get to speak with any agents — let alone head out into the field to recruit them.
I don't think they're sending interns to gather HUMINT, and I'm skeptical of how many CIA employees are doing those things regularly (non-zero amount, sure. But there's a reason that the TLA's hire so many Mormons)
Real intelligence gathering isn't James Bond.
A lot of it is not, but there are agents who do James Bond like things (although not that dramatic).
Weed is ubiquitous enough in American culture these days that it’s not unreasonable to associate “I’ve never tried cannabis” with religious orthodoxy or some other conservative behavior-limiting values. It’s not uncommon to hear something along the lines of old DARE talking points about gateway drugs or schizophrenia from people that have refused to try it, which can make a person seem like a… square.
aye there is a certain level of flexibility, adaptability, and worldliness that is required to network with people in a way that they'll give you classified information.
gotta be able to hang out on both sides of the tracks, dig?
Thanks for being so eloquent — this was exactly what I was trying to say.
A (very talented) friend of mine was supposed to work at the White House during the Obama admin. He got as far as signing documents and moving from California to Washington DC.
That was when they told him that his offer was rescinded for past use of marijuana. They said there were no exceptions to the rule, but it was the only reason he was denied.
I know multiple people with clearances who have used marijuana and significantly harder drugs as well and were honest about this on their clearance paperwork. I obviously don't know the specifics of your friend's case but it is not true in general that intelligence agencies (White House may be different or maybe was in the past) must deny you for past marijuana use, particularly if you admit to it early on.
Edit: marijuana use is now common enough that investigators will actually grill you and accuse you of lying if you say you've never used marijuana.
Places like the FBI used to have a specific number like you can’t have used marijuana more than 5 times. And then they’d polygraph you. But yes I knew people as well with normal TS clearances who had disclosed hard drugs but some intel organizations have stricter rules beyond that.
That would be back in 2009, though. Things were different back then.
I tried finding it but I listened to someone on KQED/NPR who worked for Obama's White House and had to go through a security clearance. She said she used marijuana hundreds of times, and they let her get the job. Something doesn't add up. Or, for your friend's specific job they had different rules. She wasn't an intern or something very low level, but I can't remember her title. Edit: Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, so pretty high level.
Edit:
Found it https://www.npr.org/2018/03/30/598253244/i-basically-ran-on-...
"GROSS: (Laughter) Right. So I thought this was really interesting. You had to get national security clearance for your job.
MASTROMONACO: Yeah.
GROSS: One of the questions you had to answer was a kind of detailed list of your drug use. And you'd smoked marijuana.
MASTROMONACO: Yes.
GROSS: You had to say how many times (laughter).
MASTROMONACO: Yes. That was...
GROSS: Yeah. So you handled it by saying unknown. How did you come to the conclusion that that would be your answer, an unknown number of times?
MASTROMONACO: Because - well, because I really feel strongly about not lying. And so when the FBI agent asked me for a number of times and she said, you know, 20? And I was like, no. She said, a hundred? I said, no. And then when she got up to 500, I was like, I'm not saying - I'm not giving you a number because who knows if they're going to go try and prove the number? So I just said, unknown. And apparently from her reaction, nobody had ever said that before.
GROSS: You write that you had to get randomly drug tested almost every month. Is that because you'd said unknown or does everybody have to do that?
MASTROMONACO: No. Most people get drug tested, like, once or twice that first year. But I was drug tested quite often because I was very forward-leaning about my drug use, very open-kimono, as we would say. And so, yeah, every - just about every month, you'd get an email that said, you know, you have 24 hours to show up for your test. And I would. And it was fine because I wasn't. So I had nothing to hide (laughter)."
Clearance is a funny business. They want to weed out things which can be used as leverage against people with clearance.
So - financial stuff is their number 1 clearance issue I've heard. If you're deep in debt, or otherwise demonstrate poor control over your financial life.
Next up is being part of the LGBT community - if you're in the closet. I've heard they don't care about people being gay per se, just the secret aspect of it. Anecdotally, I had a govvie friend mention an FBI analyst who had a side hustle in gay porn. Totally OK.
Being open about drug use, as long as it's not the hard drugs, I could see someone getting a pass for.
Anything that can be used as blackmail and/or show lack of good judgement/trustworthiness. Different agencies have different requirements, but past drug use is usually not an issue as long as it's disclosed.
The FBI/DEA has/had stricter rules on drug use likely because part of the job could entail dealing with drug seizures.
> So - financial stuff is their number 1 clearance issue I've heard. If you're deep in debt, or otherwise demonstrate poor control over your financial life.
True -- can't handle your money why would you deserve to handle the gub'mnts?
But also people massively in debt will get desperate and take bribes. And bribes work.
A friend of mine says that his coming-out moment happened while undergoing a polygraph to work at the CIA. Basically "you're still hiding something, what is it?", and that was it. He admitted it to the polygrapher at the same time he admitted it to himself.
He didn't get the job, not sure if that was why.
Who knows? NPR recently had a segment where they had told a lady for months during the interview process that she was a perfect fit for the agency.
At some point they went cold on her, and then told her to reapply the following year (which she tried for a few years). She'll never know why it didn't work out.
I know at least one person who was not intimidated by the lie detectors, and were able to conceal things which might have been an issue.
I have been told, though I have never personally applied for a clearance, by some people with clearances, that they cared a lot more in at least some agencies about you lying about having done it than they did about you doing it.
I heard interviews with Obama white house staff who mentioned that they had to disclose weed use in their clearance forms but that it didn't prevent them from getting a position.
It depends on the actual adjudication policy, which differs by agency. For example, for years it was a well-known but unwritten policy that DoE considered marijuana use within the past 12 months to be exclusory but greater than 12 months ago to be acceptable. There seem to be restrictions on putting this in writing (I think because the actual adjudication manuals are classified) but clearance adjudicators themselves would refer to it as the "12-month rule." The FBI at least used to be notorious for considering any drug use at any point to be exclusory, and I think the CIA generally fell into the same camp. On the other hand some organizations, especially in the IC, seemed to be much more lax about it (but often stricter about things like polygraphs).
It is useful to explain a bit about the bureaucracy here: the clearance process consists of the investigation and the adjudication. These are two separate steps and often performed by different agencies. The investigation is often performed by OPM, but DoD switched to doing their own, the FBI always has, and it's acceptable to use private contractors (usually retired insurance investigators) up to the S level in some agencies. The adjudication is much more often performed by someone directly in the issuing agency, and agencies publish their own manuals to which adjudicators work. Although the general grounds for denial of a clearance are in statute, the exact rules of what conduct amounts to what grounds (in other words, the real rules of adjudication) are contained in these manuals.
For a bit more background, the general adjudication guidelines established by the DNI are both unclassified and surprisingly succinct:
https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/Regulations/SEAD-4-...
In the present context, see "Guideline H: Drug Involvement and Substance Abuse," page 17 ff.
> You could already get a clearance with past marijuana use (and other drugs) but I guess this would just make it so someone couldn't be denied a clearance solely for that reason.
It depends. At least, it did when I went for clearance a decade ago.
a) I think recency as well as frequency mattered.
b) You had to be willing to stop.
I don't know how much (a) is still a thing but it was definitely back then. The other thing is it depends on your sponsor and who you get stuck with during the process - some people are going to care way more than others.
In addition to the rules being applied fairly indiscriminately, "past" is doing some pretty heaving lifting here. Last I knew six months was the most recent it could have been used if you were extremely lucky/valuable.