Podcast - Navigating Personnel Security Clearances (PCLs)

Molly O'Casey: Welcome to the second episode of "Are We All Clear?," the podcast on facilitating security clearances. I'm your host, Molly O'Casey, an International Trade associate with Holland Knight's Washington, D.C., office. Today's episode will provide basic information on personnel security clearances, or PCLs, including what they are, how to obtain one and some common pitfalls. Today's speakers are Andrew McAllister and Jacob Marco. Andrew is a partner in the International Trade Group based out of Washington, D.C. Jacob is an associate also with the International Trade Group based out of Philadelphia. Welcome to the podcast, guys. 

Andrew McAllister: Thanks, Molly. This is Andrew. Appreciate you getting us involved. Happy to be doing a podcast for the first time. 

Jacob Marco: Thanks, Molly. Happy to be here. 

Molly O'Casey: All righty. Happy to have you all. So for our first question, very basically, what is a PCL? 

Andrew McAllister: So a PCL is an administrative determination by a certified adjudicator that an individual is eligible under national security standards to receive access to classified information. So in order for the government to make this determination, it conducts a personnel security background investigation. Currently, almost all of the background investigations are conducted by the Department of Defense's (DOD) Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, so-called DCSA.

Eligibility for a PCL is generally limited to U.S. citizens. PCLs may be obtained by a federal employee or a private contractor performing work for the government. Similar to an FCL that was discussed in last episode, there must be a demonstrated need to know the information contained in the specified classified materials. Therefore, an individual cannot obtain or initiate the clearance process on his or her own. And just for sort of general context, there are three primary levels of PCLs. I will take them in sort of ascending order in terms of heightened sensitivities. The lowest is confidential, next up is secret, and the highest is top secret. There may be additional processes as well to gain access to sensitive compartmented information, so-called SCI, and special access programs, so-called SAP.

The listening audience may be curious and surprised to hear that there are over 4 million individuals that hold a PCL. One piece of good news is there's actually no cost for the applicant to apply for a PCL. So who says nothing in life is free? Although I would contend, as Jacob will point out in detail, that an individual is paying in other ways by having his or her whole life examined under a microscope. 

Molly O'Casey: Well, that sounds terrifying, so kudos to whoever manages to obtain one. Why do PCLs matter? 

Jacob Marco: So I think about this from two different angles. First, from the government perspective, classified information should only be released to trustworthy individuals with a so-called need-to-know the classified information. The government's goal is to ensure that classified information is handled appropriately, and the entire clearance process is designed to identify potential red flags that the government has seen in prior cases of information leakage or even espionage. The second angle is from the contractor perspective. This is frankly a government requirement in order to participate as a contractor in classified programs. So if you're interested in contracting with the Department of Defense or other classified programs, you will need individuals who hold the required individual level clearances. Our last podcast focused on clearances at the facility or contractor level, but you also need the right clearances at the individual level to participate in these programs. 

Molly O'Casey: Interesting. So how does an individual go about getting a PCL? 

Jacob Marco: I think about this in three broad stages. First, there's the sponsorship and initiation of the process. Second, the application and the background investigation itself. And third, the final adjudication of the application.

So first, in terms of sponsorship, as Andrew mentioned, individuals don't apply for security clearances on their own. They need to be sponsored either by the agency with the contracting opportunity or by the prime contractor if the individual happens to be working for a subcontractor. So the first step is the company and the sponsor determining what employees truly have a need-to-know classified material based on their specific job duties. It typically is not going to be everyone at the company, even if you are at a small company or a startup. It will only be a select number of people there.

The second stage, once you determine who those people are, is the actual application and the background investigation. An individual who needs a clearance will submit a questionnaire, often called an SF-86 or a Standard Form 86. They'll do this online, typically through DCSA's portal. In general, the applicant is going to need to submit information about their education and work history, criminal history, past residences, financial information, family information. If you're curious for the entire list of information, you can just Google SF-86 or Standard Form 86. There's a lot of information there, and we recommend people that anticipate going through this process begin early so they can start collecting the information that they need. The scope of the actual investigation will vary depending on the level of clearance that the applicant is applying for. Now, especially for the higher-level clearances like a top secret clearance, your information is going to be examined very closely. As an example, when I went through my investigation for my clearance, I needed to share a lot of detailed information, even a reference who physically saw me coming and going to the home that I listed on the form. It was a challenge to find someone because at the time I was living in a large apartment building in downtown Philadelphia. But you have to be ready to ask people for favors that, people that will be willing to speak to a government investigator on your behalf. And you may need to be creative on who you know that would be willing to do that. My number one piece of advice during this process is to be candid with your investigator. Don't try to hide something if you do have something concerning in your history. Lying or not disclosing information may jeopardize your ability to get a clearance, and it could be grounds for revoking it later if it is discovered later on. The process is not intended to be punitive. It's about safeguarding information, so honest disclosure of those past issues is viewed as much more trustworthy than attempting to hide something from the past.

Now, the third and final step is adjudication. After the investigation is complete, the sponsoring agency will make a determination of whether the individual is eligible for access. If granted, the individual is subject to continued monitoring and or reinvestigation, depending on the situation. The whole process start to finish can take a long time, often four to six months for most applications without any complicating issues. So it's important to start this process as soon as possible so your employees can actually get to work as soon as possible, too. 

Molly O'Casey: Thank you for outlining that, Jacob. At the very least, it sounds like an excellent opportunity to get to know your neighbors. What is a common pitfall that you see with this process? 

Andrew McAllister: Well, assuming you still want to go through with the process based on some of the scary details that Jacob noted, a common pitfall we see is that an individual, I would say, blindly enters the PCL process, meaning the individual doesn't entirely know the evaluation criteria that the U.S. government uses to implement this whole person concept. And so just to quickly tick through those guidelines, there's 13 of them in the regulations: allegiance to the U.S., foreign influence, foreign preference, sexual behavior, personal conduct, financial considerations, alcohol consumption, drug involvement, emotional, mental and personality disorders, criminal conduct, security violations, outside activities. And so we also see, where possible, the individual doesn't take appropriate steps to mitigate adverse information related to those guidelines. 

Molly O'Casey: Interesting. And of these guidelines, is there one that you'd like to highlight in particular? 

Andrew McAllister: So one again that we see crop up quite a bit in denials from the Department of Defense and other agencies relates to financial considerations. So things like unpaid tax returns, late filed tax returns, purchases of, you know, a speed boat when the individual has other unpaid loans that are still outstanding. So that is one that we see quite a bit. And again, that's one to some degree that can be mitigated through diligence, through paying off certain outstanding liabilities in order to improve your position as much as possible before you launch the PCL process. 

Molly O'Casey: So no speedboats in our collective futures. OK. Thank you so much for your thoughts, y'all. This area is full of acronyms. So each episode we ask our speakers to explain an acronym that featured in the episode with wrong answers only. Today's acronym is PCL. Do y'all have any thoughts? 

Jacob Marco: Well, I would say I love helping clients through this process, and I love helping them through the broader suite of trade and national security regulations that our group helps clients work through here. And because I love that so much, I would say that I have a PCL. I have a pretty cool life. 

Molly O'Casey: OK. Well, thank you for that, Jacob. I hope we all get to have pretty cool lives. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us today and talk about your experience. On our next episode, we will be talking about key management personnel or KMPs, and I hope everyone has a great week in the meantime.