PSH-21-0072 - In the Matter of Personnel Security Hearing

On July 27, 2021, an Administrative Judge (AJ) determined that the Individual's access authorization under 10 C.F.R. Part 710 should not be granted. The Individual had a history of alcohol-related arrests in 1982 or 1983, 1985, and 2012. He received counseling and attended Alcoholics Anonymous for two years after his second DUI. He remained sober for five years afterward but began using alcohol again. In 2012, the Individual had a third alcohol-related arrest. Since that 2012 arrest, the Individual has not had any further interactions with law enforcement. The AJ found that there was no evidence in the record indicating that he has been diagnosed with any alcohol-related disorder. Accordingly, the AJ determined that the security concerns raised by the Individual's three alcohol-related arrests had been mitigated by the passage of time without further criminal activity or addition incidents involving alcohol. However, the Individual had omitted significant derogatory information from two Questionnaires for National Security Positions (QNSP) that he had submitted in 2005 and 2016. As a result of these omissions, both QNSPs submitted by the Individual only reported one alcohol-related arrest despite the fact that the Individual had a history of two DUIs at the time he submitted his 2005 QNSP and had a history of three alcohol-related arrests at the time he submitted his 2016 QNSP.   More importantly, in his 2016 QNSP, the Individual twice denied that he had "ever been officially reprimanded, suspended, or disciplined for misconduct in the workplace, such as a violation of security policy," when in fact his employer had issued a Final Written Warning to him for failing to disclose the 2012 alcohol-related arrest and incarceration to the employer's security officials. At the hearing, the Individual claimed that he was not trying to conceal the fact that he was disciplined by his employer in 2012, noting that he had reported that the employer had placed him on probation for a year in response to another question in the 2016 QNSP. However, the AJ found that the Individual reported being placed on probation in response to a question about alcohol's impact on his work performance. His answer to this question gave the impression that he was disciplined for his 2012 alcohol-related arrest, rather than for his failure to disclose that arrest to the employer's security officials. Therefore, the AJ concluded that the Individual's 2016 QNSP failed to disclose that he had been disciplined by the employer for failing to disclose his 2012 arrest to the employer's security officials. Accordingly, the AJ found that the Individual had not resolved the security concerns raised by his omission from the two QNSPs. The Administrative Judge therefore concluded that the Individual's access authorization should not be granted. OHA Case No. PSH-21-0072 (Steven L. Fine).