Chapter 10
Jeffee Tries to Get a Security Clearance… Again
I interrupt my wonderful love letters to bring you the latest in challenging events that come Jeffee’s way. In March, 2010 I went through hell because I had to renew my secret clearance. All auditors are required to have a secret clearance when they work for the Army or Air Force. The fact that I haven't looked at a classified document for an audit in my entire 30 year career has no bearing on whether I need to go through all the work and hassle of getting a security clearance.
The process is more like a marathon than the hundred yard dash – if you know what I mean. One of the joys of trying to get a security clearance is to fill out a 29 page computer form that asked for everything in the world about you except for your DNA. In March, 2010, I think it took me seven or eight or nine or 10 tries to finally answer all of the questions that they wanted. And back then I didn't have one hassle that I'm going to have this year. In March 2010 I didn't need to get a fingerprint check. This year May, 2011 not only did I need to fill out the 29 page form, I had to provide a resume and fill out OPM form 306 to get my clearance started. Sometime next week I will go for my fingerprint check. And it gets worse. I can't get the fingerprint check at Fort Sam Houston; I have to go out to Randolph Air Force Base not close to Fort Sam Houston to get the fingerprint check done. Is my life wonderful or not? Answer – or not.
I had to find answers to questions like when did your father-in-law die? Well, my father-in-law was a wonderful Philippine gentleman who lived in the Philippines his whole life and who I never met because he died while I was still writing love letters back and forth to Judy which you will read about below.
So I had to spend a lot of time just finding out some of the most strange and unusual information, stuff I've forgotten years ago. How would you like to try and remember what your German phone number was 10 years ago? I would like you to read try and remember what your supervisor’s phone number was 10 years ago? It doesn't even matter that the guy is long gone and onto greener pastures, they still want to know the phone number because computer forms are relentless – if you don't fill in one of the little blocks they will never accept the whole 29 page document as I found out many, many times.
One lucky break I got was that the security clearance office was in the building right in front of my building (this is the building I now live in as I talk about elsewhere we had to move from our building this building which is right next to our building, this is the building with the famous jackhammer you read about earlier) so I only had a walk about 200 feet to go in there and ask questions and try and get them to help me.
I went over there at least five or six times and the people were very nice and finally after many tries I was able to complete the security questionnaire in 2010. The last piece of the puzzle was the fact that seven or eight years ago I came back on home leave and got some dental work done. The dentist never billed me. So I forgot all about the bill. Years later I get this notice from some collection agency and they are right that I owe this money and when I called them they were willing to settle for less money. I remembered I paid the bill so I tell them the reason I didn't pay was because the dentist never sent me a bill and I gave the dentist my correct German overseas address but they never sent the bill. How could I pay a bill I never received?
Of course I'll be the first to admit I wasn't going to actively pursue that bill. If I get lucky enough to skip one, even though I should pay it, I feel it made up for many other bills I did pay and I never should've had to pay in my life. I know that shortcut ethics is wrong but when you're poor, you tend to think that way and ethics get pushed aside. Sometimes when your back is up against the wall and you have many other bills you need to pay, it's easy to say not paying the bill is correct because I never received it.
So I needed the name and address of this collection agency to make this 29 page security questionnaire happy. Thank God, I actually saved a copy of the letter they sent me and I vaguely remembered where I was and I searched for it and I found it and I was able to put in the correct information. The security form wouldn't just accept the fact that I said yes, I paid a collection agency $1200.07 years ago, that isn't good enough for them. They had to have the exact date I paid it, and the exact address of the collection agency – isn't life great!
So I was so happy when I finally got over the hump and the security office finally gave me the great news that I was now the proud possessor of a new secret security clearance that would be good for 10 years. I thought I would never have to go through this hell again because I definitely plan to retire before 10 years are up. And if you guys and gals buy enough copies of this bio, I promise to retire immediately!
Well I was wrong, weedhopper. When "Your only crime was being born" bad things tend to happen many times.
I get this e-mail from Don at the Air Force (my new employer since October 2010 because I went from being an Army employee to being a joint base employee with the Air Force the other part of the joint and they were the ones in charge so we all became Air Force employees) informing me that I need to do a new secret security clearance. I e-mail Don back and said I just did one last year, can you use that one? Of course not! That's logical and would be very easy on me. Why would anybody want to make life easy for me? Of course they want to agonize and torment me doing government gobbledygook that I hate.
So finally I started once again doing my security clearance. I finally did get one break, because when I opened up the link Don sent me to fill in the information for the security clearance it was exactly the same form I filled out last year. And luckily for me, the old form saved much of the information I had put in a year ago, so basically I only had to answer a few simple yes and no questions that for some reason were blank even though I answered them a year ago so I answered them. And then under one section I added in a prior security clearance review that I had. And of course I added the one from March 2010 on top of the one originally I had done in 1997.
Over and over I forget at least one question on the form and so I had to go through the form many, many times. It wasn't until I had gone through every one of the screens many times because I used to start with screen one and then would hit save that screen and go on to screen two, screen three and wind up somewhere around screen 31 . Every sequence would take quite a bit of time to keep going through all 30 screens. It wasn't until later I realized there was a drop down menu at the top and I could go to any section I wanted to immediately without clicking save 20 times to get to the section I wanted.
And lucky for me Don is close by in the Air Force temporary headquarters trailers so he gave me the good advice to print out the 29 pages before I actually sent it in so he could look it over and see if it was correct. I thought when I filled the questionnaire it had to be correct because I wasn't getting any error messages on the computer and if I had one thing wrong with it or left one question or box empty, it was good at giving me an error message and forced me to put something in that box before would accept the form.
And that when you get to the end it lets you print out the security questionnaire that you filled out and Don said print that out and bring it over to me to look at. The security form also has me print out three signature pages and is so complicated, Don said he will come over to my office and tell me exactly how to fill out the signature forms or else they won't be acceptable. The government never makes life easy.
So I printed out my security questionnaire and left the signature forms blank and brought them over to Don. I found him in the back trailer of the temporary Air Force Headquarters. The Air Force is in the process of building a new headquarters building because they didn't exist on Fort Sam Houston before October, 2010 so they fixed up some very fancy mobile homes–type trailers for the Air Force to live in for about a year while they built their headquarters.
I go over to the trailer and I finally find Don in the back trailer, I happened to stumble past the tax assistance office that the Judge Advocate General has set up to help soldiers and family members do their income taxes. It was a typical example of how the government helps you. There were eight little cubicles where there was a desk and computer and a chair and there were five or six people waiting and I think there were one or two clerks in the cubicles to help them – a typical example of what you find in the government when you need help.
So I finally found Don, he was very nice young thirtyish man who I guess had just gotten out of the Air Force and was working as a civilian and lucky for me he's an expert on this stuff because I didn't have the filling out “Security Questionnaires for Dummies” book. Don started looking over my entire form and naturally he found two things that were wrong. He said, Jeff you know that latest security clearance you had done? I have to put down April, 2010 not March, 2010. He said you have to put down the date they completed the security investigation not the date you sent in the questionnaire. Of course there are no instructions whatsoever that tell you that and how would I know when they completed the security clearance? They didn't tell me.
And then Don told me I'll just have to delete the 1997 security investigation and just leave the new security investigation that was done in March and April 2010. And then he said I checked Department of Defense as being the agency that did my security clearance. Don told me that was wrong; I actually have to put down the Office of Personnel Management or OPM as the agency that did my clearance. I told Don stupid me, I worked for the Army at the time of that security clearance and I actually thought the Department of Defense did security clearances for people who work for the Army – how stupid of me!
So I took Don's suggestions and bring the questionnaire back to my office and start trying to fix it up. The first thing I find out is that the stupid questionnaire will not let me get into any of the earlier sections and immediately takes me to the end of the report that says steps one through five which is basically print out the signature pages, print out the completed security questionnaire and then transmit the form to the agency you're sending it to.
I called back and told Don the system won't let me get into that prior pages in the security investigation section – all I can get into are steps one through 5 so what do I do? Don says oh what you're going to have to do Jeff is send the report with the two wrong answers back to me –s technically the ball is in my court. So I sent the report with the wrong information to Don. Then Don can go back and return the form to me to fix the errors. Really, this is true!
So I sent the completed wrong security questionnaire to Don and later that day I was able to get back in and change the security information to what Don wanted. I tried calling Don to come over because I told him I was leaving on sick leave at 11:30 because the stupid building I'm in, typical example of the government not caring about its workers, is renovating the basement right underneath my office. The construction crew was using a very loud jackhammer that sounds like a jet plane is below me. They didn't seem to give a crap that there were actually people working above that they were making sick from the noise and vibration of their jackhammer. Didn't seem like the people in charge of the building gave a crap about us either.
So I told my boss my boss to hell with this crap, I am taking sick leave and I sent the director of our section an e-mail telling him that I was going home because the jackhammer noise and vibration was making me very sick and I couldn't take it anymore and the working conditions were impossible.
Of course when I called to tell Don I am leaving by 11:30 he didn't answer his phone so I left a message. Then I sent Don an e-mail with the same information. Of course I never heard from him by 11:30 so the saga will continue next week.
I'll keep you informed if there are any more roadblocks in the path of just getting another security clearance. Oh I forgot, it gets even worse. I will have to go out to Randolph Air Force Base which is at least 15 miles away from Fort Sam Houston to get my fingerprints taken by somebody. So I get to drive 15 miles out to Randolph AFB which I barely know. I have no idea where I'm supposed to go to get this fingerprint thing because I don't know my way around the base but once again that's the kind of luck I have.
I mean amazingly to me who is full of common sense; I was wondering why there wasn't one place at Fort Sam Houston that could do a fingerprint checks? I mean don't the police have some kind of fingerprint blotter thingy that when they arrest people they can take their fingerprints? I will call up Human Resources on Monday and asked them about this and say this is absolutely unreal. Let somebody in authority know that there are greatly inconveniencing all of us at Fort Sam Houston if every time somebody has to get a security clearance they have to drive out 15 miles to Randolph to get a damn fingerprint taken.
I actually quit substitute teaching for the Northeast Independent School District because the state legislature in their infinite stupidity decided anybody who was in education was a child molester so everybody including existing teachers, substitute teachers etc. had to go down to some office and get their fingerprints taken. And that's not bad enough, they actually wanted the teacher or substitute teacher in my case to the pay $60 for the privilege of wasting their time and gas to get this stupid fingerprint check.
As I told that bar girl in Korea elsewhere in the book, "I have to take poop from a lot of people, but you're not one of them". So I called up the Northeast Independent School District and told them there's no way in hell I'm paying $60 to get my fingerprints taken for a substitute teaching job that pays $75 a day and I did one time in the last year. My experience the one day as a substitute teacher was horrible and I vowed I would never do it again. I guess I made an impression on the school district when I called up and flat out told them there's no way in hell I'm having my fingerprints taken, because when the San Antonio Express News, our local newspaper, did an article on fingerprinting teachers, the school district actually commented that was one person who phoned the school district and said they were quitting substitute teaching job rather than have their fingerprint taken. That was me!
I called the school district and told them this is absolutely ridiculous. I want the same rights anybody arrested has: the right to have their fingerprints taken for free. You think they charge prisoners $60 to have their fingerprints taken? What a load of crap, I have to put up with a lot of crap but that was one bit of crap I didn't have to put up with and never will. Of course I will have to put up with the crap about the fingerprints at Randolph but I'm damn sure going to find out why the hell I can’t have it done at Fort Sam Houston and I know the right people to ask in Human Relations. And I will talk with the Civilian Personnel Office.
But I still wasn't done. I'm beginning to feel like Frodo in Lord of the Rings trying to return the ring to the Valley of Fire. Yeah I will get there eventually but there shouldn't be so many obstacles in my way. Remember like I said I had to fill out a 29 page questionnaire, fill out three signature forms that require a security expert in person so I can sign them correctly, and I find out I also need to show the security expert a copy of my resume and fill out that form from the Office of Personnel Management or OPM. That's the way they work so I will continue my quest like Frodo next week to see how much more I have to go through before I get my second and last security clearance before I can tell the government bye-bye.