Take a look into the work that goes into background checks.
ALBANY, GA. -- All people on LOGCOM including military, contractors, and civilian employees must pass a background check.
It starts with basic paper work and a finger print, however it goes deeper. Background checks normally include calling references, checking education, and looking into any possible criminal history to make sure the person is who they say they are on paper. At LOGCOM Lawrence Floyd runs hundreds of checks on that and he includes affiliations, family history, and even personal finances. Floyd says finances are checked because a tough financial situation can motivate someone to do wrong. “If someone has a financial issue and they're exposed to classified information then that person can be subject to someone actually getting that person to coerce that person to go ahead and steal secret documents or classified documents” says Floyd.
The confidential levels of security clearance range from “confidential” to “top secret” all the way to the extremely rare “SCI/SAT programs”. “The SCI/SAT programs are for like areas where you deal with extreme serious information like the actual stuff with the President, with Osama Bin Laden, and stuff like that” says Floyd.
The office also deals with issues that can affect security clearance like if an employee has a run in with the law. “You may have an employee that comes in and they may have numerous offenses and we will suspend that employee’s clearance automatically because we’ve given that employee the opportunity to try to fix their situation. You can have an employee that created one offense but because of the severity of that offense we will automatically suspend clearance and pull it automatically. So it depends on the actual violation in itself.
Security officials say 90% of background checks are perfectly smooth.