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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

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That was when they told him that his offer was rescinded for past use of marijuana.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.

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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.

That would be back in 2009, though. Things were different back then.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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