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It's a great story, but didn't the author confess to a felony by publishing it? He lied on an official document, even if directed to do so by the person across him. I know this is pedantic, but that's exactly what I would expect from a security clearance vetting process.
Edit: it's a story from 1988, so at the time it was only 45 years ago.
> I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story. Did he ever write about what that trick is?
> After about three months it stopped and a month later I was suddenly informed that the clearance had been granted. The other two people whose investigations were begun at the same time did not receive their clearances until several months later. Mongrels are mixed race dogs, I guess? So just put the concept of "race" under scrutiny, and have your mental health debated. E voilà, your background check takes off fast…
I'm so that guy. Not for security clearance, but medical questionaires. I always fill them in with total honesty, listing the most minor and irrelevant details if they fit the question. My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere, even when I think: "but shouldn't you mention that thing?" Of the two of us, she's the one who has tons of exper…
Last time I was at the doctor, I answered “not that I know of” when asked if I had any allergies. Afterwards at the pharmacy, it turns out my prescription included a box of antihistamine.
> I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story. Did he ever write about what that trick is?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sort of thing happened a lot with East Germans in the 90s etc. After unification, we of course all became Western Germans, with the right to travel to the US on the visa waiver program. You just had to fill out the I-90 form (and pay 6$ when crossing a land border). It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Well, most East…
> It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no? Similarly there's still increased rules if you have been to particular places
Those are widely different questions. These people were affirmatively not war criminals nor wanted by Nuremberg. And they were not equivalent of islamic terrorists either - the equivalent of that would be membership in stasi or so.
This would be analogical to "was you muslim" or "did you had membership in Mosque".
Sadly, the moral of the story seems to be that the 1943 FBI had loads of zealous (performative?) plods on staff, but ~zero law enforcement professionals. In '43, the US had plenty of highly competent professional cryptographers, who were quite experienced with current Japanese, German, Italian, British, etc. codes. Before an entire local FBI office spent even a day on this case (let alone 6 weeks), maybe they should…
It's a great story, but didn't the author confess to a felony by publishing it? He lied on an official document, even if directed to do so by the person across him. I know this is pedantic, but that's exactly what I would expect from a security clearance vetting process.
If the FBI investigates a spy seen driving a silver Honda Civic with license plate ABC-1234, and looks into an unrelated civilian who drives a silver Honda Civic with license plate ADC-1234 in case their witness misremembered the license place, that doesn't mean the unrelated civilian was "investigated by the FBI".
> I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story. Did he ever write about what that trick is?
https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html Other poster posted the same link but is getting downvoted so might get overlooked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no? Similarly there's still increased rules if you have been to particular places
> Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no? Similarly there's still increased rules if you have been to particular places Those are widely different questions. These people were affirmatively not war criminals nor wanted by Nuremberg. And they were not equivalent of islamic terrorists either - the equivalent of that would be membership in stas…