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[Note - the following presentation was written by Dr. LeRoy A. Stone, a very senior and well-respected forensic psychologist who has eared his Forensic Psychology Diplomate from the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP).  He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1962,  while in academic employment (for almost 20 years), he was on the faculty of two large major universities where he rose to the rank of full professor.  He completed two years of post-doctoral training in three USA and one European universities as a U.S. Public Health Fellow.  He has written several books, published more than 225 research articles in scientific behavioral science journals.  In 1997, he retired from his Chief Research Psychologist position in the USA's largest intelligence agency, after 24 years of federal service.   As a private practice forensic psychologist he has testified in a number of different states' district courts, in federal courts, as well as in a large number of state and federal hearings.   Further background information regarding Dr. Stone can be found in his Web Site, which has the following Internet address:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/home.html.

     The above was given so that the following would be validly seen as having credibility.  If anyone has doubts about Dr. Stone's status in the discipline of psychology, for the past almost 50 years, they are invited to make an Internet search with him being the focused upon subject object.  Use any major search engine (i.e., Google, MSN, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc.) and type in "leroy a. stone" (italics included) as that to be 'searched'  ]

     If you have, in the past year or so, made application for a federal employment position that requires you to be granted a high-level security clearance as part of the employment requirements, and have received notice from the involved government agency/bureau/department that you cannot be further considered as you have been denied being granted the needed security clearance status - then you are strongly urged to carefully read this presented message.  Also, this same suggestion is made if you are a person who has been recently hired by a federal government contractor for a position for which you must be eventually granted a specified security clearance status and you have been informed that you will not be further considered for the position as you have been denied being granted the needed security clearance.

    If you fully accept the government's denial decision as not surprising as you are aware that you have very significant problems in your background/history that should be expected to negatively impact upon a security clearance adjudication, then do not bother reading the remainder of this message.  However, if you think that someone with your particular background/history should be successful and be eventually granted the required security clearance status, then this is for you!

     It is foolish to think that federal governmental security-clearance processing always results in entirely correct final adjudication decisions.  If once can conceptualize an adjudication decision scale continuum that extends from "Absolutely Should be Denied"  up to "Absolutely Should be Granted," then one can imagine that any single adjudicated decision lies somewhere on this continuum.  Some decisions are very close to either of the two polar continuum ends.  However, it can be expected that most lie somewhere in the middle range of this decision scale; some above and some below some decided-upon cutting score point.  Those above this point are granted the clearance status and those below are denied being granted the required clearance status.  The closer an adjudicated decision is to the cutting score point, the more likely that a decision error may have taken place.  It can be easily and correctly argued that those right on (or in close proximity to) the cutting score about as correct as one might find using a coin toss upon which to base the adjudication decision.

     What this means is that anyone being considered for a security clearance who has some potential problems or 'garbage' in their background, will most likely end up with his/her adjudication decision being somewhere close to or in the mid-range of the adjudication decision continuum scale.  This most likely means that most of the USA citizens, who find themselves being processed/adjudicated for a potential high-level security clearance, probably end up with the adjudicated decision, regarding them, being such that a decision error not only could occur, but that an decision error is not at all unlikely.

     Dr. Stone has elsewhere presented sound psychometric evidence that the 'reliability' of security clearance granting adjudication decisions most likely should not be considered to be very high or 'good.'  Reliability simply means stability. An example can be given here to further explain this psychometric concept.  Consider a weight scale that gives a markedly different weight reading even when the person being weighed is simply stepping off and on the scale.  No one would argue that this particular scale is providing correct weight readings as the readings being seen are jumping all over (i.e., they are not stable, hence not reliable).  The basis for arguing that security clearance adjudication decisions has been published as an article  in the journal, Psychology of Espionage Reports, Vol.      , 2003 ; it has the title of "Reliability and Validity Estimations for the Personnel Security Standards Psychological Questionnaire (PSSPQ)."  This article can be found at:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspqreliabilityvalidity.html.                              .   More information pertaining to this same subject can be found at:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/adjudicationreliability.html.

If you think that you have been wronged or 'screwed' by the government's decision to not grant you a job-required security clearance, what should you do about it?

If you truly believe that you have been incorrectly denied being granted a security clearance, then quite obviously you should seek the services of an attorney who specializes, or who has had some past experience, in dealing with governmental agencies, bureaus, departments or the like regarding the filing of an legal appeal pertaining to the believed wrong adjudication decision affecting you.     However you should be aware that such legal counsel usually comes with what most consider to be a high price.  Is there anyway that you can obtain a sort of 'second opinion' regarding the fact that the government turned you down for being granted your needed security clearance.?  Or put another way, is there anyway that you can be relatively sure that the government's opinion regarding your suitability for being granted a security clearance is likely to be upheld if appealed, or might it be vulnerable to a properly conducted appeal attempt?  There would be little sense in paying an attorney to file an appeal when in fact you are not at all likely to be successful with such an attempt.

     However, how can one obtain a sort of highly objective 'second opinion' regarding your chances for success were you to file for an appeal of your denied status for being granted a high-level security clearance?  Actually, there is a procedure that exists that may be capable of providing a sort of 'second opinion' regarding your probabilities of success/failure in ever being granted your needed security clearance status.

     Dr. Stone was recently introduced to a new use for his PSSPQ testing instrument by a couple PSSPQ clients who had shortly before received word from government and contractor officials that they had been denied being granted their needed security clearances.  Both of these PSSPQ clients were each quite independently strongly believing that there was nothing in their histories or backgrounds that would warrant their being officially turned down for security clearance status.  Each of these individuals, quite separately (i.e., they had no knowledge of each other at all) saw Dr. Stone's PSSPQ web pages and cam to the conclusion that perhaps 'taking' the PSSPQ might be able to provide them with a objective and scientifically-based prediction of whether they would be successful or not were they to be processed and adjudicated for a high-level security clearance. 

     When the two above mentioned individuals were administered the PSSPQ, one obtained prediction-results that indicated a high likelihood of failure in being granted his needed security clearance.  This particular individual was sufficiently impressed with his PSSPQ based prediction-results that he later informed Dr. Stone (which was completely this individual's own idea) that he had decided that it would be fruitless for im to further consider an idea of appealing the government's decision.  The other individual who was administered the PSSPQ obtained results that suggested that he most likely should expect being successful in being granted a security clearance but that the probability for such success was associated with a probability of about 0.65 (i.e., not overly high; far from being slam-dunk).  At the time of the writing of this current presentation, Dr. Stone is unaware of whether this second individual has been successful in his appealing the governmental decision.  However, this individual did inform Dr. Stone that the attorney he obtained has expressed some optimism regarding the potential results of filing an appeal.  Apparently, his attorney believes that the government's decision was most likely affected by some quite false information provided by a informational source.   This individual's set of PSSPQ scales' scores was not at all consistent with information, from a single source person (who apparently had some dislike for the subject individual).  At this point in time, the individual's attorney has expressed (to his client) that some sort of meeting or hearing, regarding this whole matter) is likely to be scheduled in the near future.

     What this all means is that all of the security clearance processings and adjudication decisions are made by human beings and that, it must be expected, any such decisions are quite subjective and, not surpassingly, not associated with overly high judgmental reliability.  Any given individual being processed/adjudicated for a security clearance is evaluated by a number of governmental employees or contractor employees, who supposedly are expert in being involved in security clearance evaluations.  Were the individual to have filed his/her application materials one day earlier or later, it is highly likely that an entire different set of governmental employees or contractor employees would be involved.  Different sets of people can sometimes arrive at different conclusions, even when presented with exactly the very same information.  If you think that this is not so very true, then consider most of the US Supreme Court decisions made in the past couple of years.  Most of these Court decisions are 5/4, 6/3 or some other quite 'split-decision.  Another example one can consider is that many of the different sports referees quite frequently do not see a given sports happening the same way.  It is not at all unusual for boxing referees to see the winner of a boxing round in quite different directional fashions.  Expert witnesses in court trials are notorious for disagreeing with one another interpretive conclusions regarding evidence matters.
 
 

 The PSSPQ Can Be of Real Assistance if One is Considering the Filing of an Appeal Regarding the Government's Initial Decision to Deny Granting a Needed Security Clearance

 

     Therefore, the message here is quite clear.  In the event that you have been turned down by governmental officials regarding you being granted a high-level security clearance, there really are some reasonable and valid actions you should consider.   If you are uncertain as to whether it might be a wise or good idea to secure the services of an appropriate attorney who might file an appeal on your behalf regarding the governmental decision.  If you are considering searching for an appropriate attorney, then your being administered the PSSPQ might provide information to you that could prove to be very helpful in your decision-making.  The costs for being administered the PSSPQ are very modest, especially when compared to attorney/legal fees associated with putting together the basis for a legal appeal regarding your security clearance failure situation.

     In fact, the 'second' PSSPQ client's (described in a couple of the previous paragraphs) attorney has communicated to Dr. Stone that for any of his future security clearance appeals cases, he is going to, prior to starting on any legal work that could lead to filing an appeal, require his involved clients to submit to PSSPQ testing.  He advised that PSSPQ testing could very soon on "clarify [his] client's claims considerably." 

     Anyone who might be considering securing the services of an attorney to initiate an appeal regarding a security clearance denial should be strongly advised to choose an attorney who already had had previous experience (hopefully, lots of it!) in dealing in such matters with USA intelligence, security, defense, and other governmental agencies, bureaus and departments.  These kinds of governmental entities have long ago learned to 'stone-wall' more naive  and inexperienced attorneys.  Whatever you do, do not select an attorney to assist you, in these types of cases, who has never before filed any kind of appeal with the above mentioned class of governmental offices.

     As stated at the very beginning of this presentation, more information regarding the PSSPQ can be found in this test's index/home page, whose address is:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/psspq.html.  For those who already are knowledgeable regarding the PSSPQ, very specific instructions on the procedure(s) to be followed so as to be administered the PSSPQ; these instructions can be found at:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/howtotakepsspq.html.
 
 

Good Luck!