Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 16, 2024

Many years ago, I had background checks down for military clearance. Guess I passed.

had a NUC/NAC done on me, men in suits even visited our preacher, in rural west KS.

Back in college I had a friend who was applying for a job with NSA. Men in dark suits came and interviewed half the people in our dorm. All they learned was that most of the girls had a crush on S……. er, my friend.

When I worked at Social Security as a temp, I was inspected by BOTH the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security before I got a picture I.D. badge with which to log on to their computer system.

My spouse has had two clearances from two different agencies. Maybe because the DOD (Dept of Defense) had completed the first one about a decade earlier, the second one by the CIA didn’t seem quite as invasive.

I remember Special Agent Maxwell Smart (my name for him) peeking in my garage window and following me to the grocery store the first time. And yes, ALL of our neighbors were questioned both times.

I was questioned by the FBI at work, because someone had broken into my Apartment Mailbox and stolen my Tax Refund Check. They caught him trying to cash it at a Gas Station in another City…

I didn’t realize that my Dad had a very high-security clearance until I was in the Army and the military was running one on me. Neither did he, when I mentioned it to him. He was as surprised as I was.

My mother was a Spanish teacher who was questioned about one of her students. She knew too much about him to give a positive recommendation.

I had an acquaintance once (fellow science-fiction fan) who let slip that he had a federal security clearance. “Really?”, I asked. “What for?” His response: “I can’t tell you.” I guess he really was secure.

I’m not sure if the feds ever do follow-up security clearances to try to find out whether people who were originally cleared, say, 15-20 yeas ago have subsequently been compromised. If so, those would probably be worse risks than the incoming rookies.

My cousin Sheila had a hard time keeping her top secret clearance because of several brothers involved in marijuana transactions. She always had to explain that she had nothing to do with them; which was true but made it hard on family reunions even when they were all out of jail at the same time.

I had a rather thorough background check, I believe, before I got and interview at the Tennessee Valley Authority uranium enrichment plant.

You know, where reactor fuel is made, and also used in things that make a very big boom.

I know for sure they did a background check. Many of my friends and relatives told me they were contacted.

I had to get classified clearance to be a janitor once. That was a circus.

I have nothing to share here. I feel so inadequate.

I’ve endured regular background checks to get an E-Railsafe card for working on railroad property and to have it renewed every couple of years since 9/11. Thing is, in all that time, no one has ever asked if I had the clearance or the card when I was on railroad property. And I was only ever on railroad property because I was asked and expected. Like I was before 9/11.

I remember years ago when I was up for a rather high clearance and the person operating the “lie detector” complained that I had led too straight a life. He couldn’t find questions I would be sufficiently embarrassed by, to calibrate his machine. So if you hope to get into that kind of work, make sure you do some things you should not…

Things may have changed by now but, when I was 17, I had a full background check for secret clearance. The forms I had to fill out were pretty old. One of the questions was, “Have you ever been a member of the Japanese Imperial Boy Scouts?”.

He had a girlfriend?