Debunking Secret Facility Fakers

I've been debating on posting this for a while, but in light of recent posts, I felt it was merited. These days, it appears that everyone and their brother is a worker at a secret facility, and has just happened to decide to start posting here at ATS.

Now, I myself work at no such facility. I am, however, in a not-quite unique position to know, first-hand, a considerable amount about the type of people who work there, the employment practices, and the tells for someone hoaxing the part. And the number of red flags I'm seeing lately, along with the number of people I'm seeing who just openly accept the words of anyone claiming to be a secret facility worker, have prompted me to start this thread:

How to Debunk a Secret Facility Faker

Employee Profiles
There are two types of employees at secret facilities. Laborers and Desk Jockeys. Laborers are the ones whose job generally entails doing the same job, day after day, be it pushing a broom, sorting and retrieving inventory, attaching a wing-skin to an aircraft, etc. Desk Jockeys typically work different problems on a regular basis, generally via computer, paper, whiteboard, or whatever. Laborers are almost always union members, a great frustration of the desk jockeys.

Each must generally pass a rigorous amount of screening for loyalty to one's employer, one's country, and one's moral and ethical compass, in addition to the "height requirement" of essential job skills and experience. Background checks are typically done on everyone. If the job requires clearance, these background checks, paperwork, interviews, etc, can go on for weeks or months before you even find out if you're hired. Desk Jockeys are typically subject to FAR more scrutiny than Laborers.

Typically, if one is the sort who could ever be tempted to run publicly with company secrets, or sell them, you simply don't get hired. The psychological, criminal, economic, and other filters one must pass through just to get hired are quite accurate, and have had many decades to hone. They are not foolproof, but it should give you a good idea of the type of person who ever even gets to set foot within the building.

Continuity Checks
The foreground and background checks (ie. bank accounts, psychological profiles, medical records, loyalty assessments, outside-work monitoring, etc.) continue off and on throughout one's employment, subject of course, to demands of one's job. Someone whose job it is to retrieve, stock, and inventory parts in a warehouse is going to have very little access to sensitive documents, but at $700/bolt, has access to some very expensive hardware they might be tempted to sell, so their financial transactions might be a lot more subject to monitoring than their internet forum usage.

Conversely, one who has access to "Eyes Only" documents can count on their life being an open book to The Company at any given time. Passive checks are always in place. Active checks will happen any time there is reason to, and without the employees knowledge or consent, and might even include full searches of one's homes, cars, accounts, etc.

Obviously, these checks involve not only a significant number of loops that must be hopped through in order to enact, but are also rather expensive to perform. Checking 500 people in such a way would cost far too much time and money. This is where compartmentalization comes in.

Compartmentalization
Compartmentalization is the systematic physical, informational, and infrastructural separation of entities, jobs, and knowledge within the company. Employees may work within the same building, on the same floor, and walk down the same hallway, yet never meet in 20 years of working, because they each have a separate keypunch/safelock door that lead to separate work areas, and the only time the two might meet is at the snack machine, or the bathroom. Each Compartment is given strict orders not to discuss their jobs, except in the vaguest of terms, like "Systems Engineer," or "Operations Analyst".

In short, the guy grabbing a Coke out of the vending machine next to you could be an engineer on a pulse engine, and you'd never know it, because his description of job duties, outside his compartment, amounts to "I work on engines." The lady behind him, waiting her turn to use the vending machine, might be the programmer for the flight-software that interprets the pulse engines feedback, and adjusts the flight controls, and both of their work might be critically important to one another's job, and yet, without a specific job and purpose, they might never even know this, because the only thing that crosses the boundary between one compartment and another is approved information, and the source of that information generally references nothing but a billing number.

Compartments don't get exciting names like "Black Hole Research" and "Warp Drive Technology Division." They get names like 882-8A, from which nothing can be derived, not even by the compartment that houses the database workers themselves. When a new project opens, a new number is issued to it. The database doesn't read "882-8A: Cloaking Systems", it's just "882-8A", along with its list of points of contact, its budget, and what requirements must be met to review any information coming out of this department.

Those requirements might be specific project numbers, they might be levels of clearance, they might be the color of your eyes. These requirements are not advertised, even within the company. You don't just walk into the local company library and say "Oh, let me see all the documents I qualify to read." If you are meant to read a document, it has either been delivered to you, or you already know specifically which one you are looking for.

The containers for this information bits will have their own highly visible sorting system that employees are already trained to recognize. For instance, a "red" folder might mean "if you don't have Alpha Level security, don't read this." If such a folder gets accidentally delivered to you, or you come across it, and you realize you don't have this clearance level, you don't read it unless the appropriate parties confirm it. Doing otherwise may result in termination to imprisonment.

Gaining Clearance Levels
Clearance is not something you walk into the company with. It is not something that is arbitrarily handed to you just because a job needs to be done. It is usually not even something you can shoot for, it just happens along the way, through repeatedly proving your silence and loyalty, and the passage of time.

If you are being considered for an Earth-shattering project, long before you are even made aware that this project is hiring within the company, you have been physically, emotionally, financially, criminally, and otherwise heavily evaluated ahead of time to see if you are capable of even revealing this prospect to. Assuming you make the cut, and apply, and are accepted as an interviewee, you will be given leading questions to determine if you can handle the stress, moral questions, ethical questions, secrecy, etc, that such a project will entail. Before you even show up to the interview, active monitoring begins, and effectively doesn't stop, only the level of it changes over time.

Even if you pass all the checks, you meet the "height requirement" of job skills, you answer all the questions perfectly, and your active monitoring picks up zero anomalies, you might not get the job. Perhaps you haven't worked at the company long enough. Perhaps they only had a limited number of positions, and they were filled by someone better. Perhaps the job requires a zero-risk candidate and your child was busted for possession a few years ago. It could be any number of things, but they won't tell you what blew it. The results of all this will be carefully filed away, and might be useful in future checks, but all the same, you will go through the same thing for any project you apply for.

Informants
What this effectively means is that, by the time you are given enough access to know anything that would be particularly amazing, disturbing, or otherwise outside the realm of "we make jets", you have been so heavily weighed and measured that you either simply aren't the kind of person who would kiss and tell, or if you are, you are a professional plant, like a Human Intelligence operative from another country, and are so deep undercover that this would have been planned from the beginning, or that you are a paid informant.

In any event, the "altruistic whistleblower" does not stick around and continue to report from within the company. They have 2 options. One is to resign in protest and become an actual public whistleblower, in which case the need for secrecy on their part is moot. Publicity becomes their friend, and the forum-poster would have zero reason not to give their real name, location they worked at, job, etc. Typically, though, these altruistic whistleblowers exist for reasons of discrimination or unethical business practices, not because some mind-blowing technology was revealed.

Technological whistleblowers simply don't happen. You go into these jobs, these fields, knowing full well that what you might learn, experience, or develop could be of Earth-shattering consequence, and that you must remain silent on it, or you simply don't make the cut.

The other kind of altruistic whistleblower, perhaps the only "genuine" kind that might ever be of interest to the people at ATS would know full well just how quickly leaks are tracked, plugged, and projects dismantled and records are destroyed. They would know full well that the information they are revealing would constitute treason, a capital (death penalty) offense in the U.S., and would have to be of such incredible import that they would be willing to risk everything to get that information out there. Quitting would either be too obvious, or would put them out of the loop to the point their information would quickly become useless. So you end up with one of two types: A Deep Throat, or a Media Clusterbomb.

The Deep Throat, like the informant who helped the journalists crack Watergate, is going to pick one close, trusted source, whom he can reliably contact, meet without being tracked, and will keep facilitate the agenda required without revealing him as a source of knowledge. The Deep Throat desires no glory, no interaction, no risk. The idea of Deep Throat going on a forum, advertising where they work, what job they did, what they know, and inviting a Q&A session is beyond absurd; for the genuine informant it is a death wish.

The Media Clusterbomb knows their time is very soon to be up. Either the project is about to achieve fruition, or they are about to be taken out of the loop. As such, a "press kit" is developed for as many news media as possible, and distributed as quickly as possible, and then the person goes into hiding, most likely in a foreign country. The press kit would have truly damning evidence of which there would be little to no question of its authenticity or importance.

In other words...
Don't buy into people on an internet forum claiming to have worked at a secret facility, unless they have delivered indisputable, or nearly indisputable proof, up front, and then quickly expect them to be silenced by whomever they just blew the whistle on.

If you see someone running a Q&A Session about working at these facilities, you can pretty well rest assured they are a hoaxer, and not worth your time, except possibly as entertainment value. The most simple proof of this is never seeing any concrete proof or information, rather only vague phrases like "Oh yeah, we have alien technology" and "we're working on black holes and stuff".


The easiest "Litmus Test" for a "Area 51 Faker" is this:

Could you (or a clever friend if you're not that bright), have just as easily made a thread and claimed the same exact things they did, and made up the same "info"?

(eg. "Yeah, we work with aliens, and we have stargate technology!")

Did they string it out over a long period of time?

(eg. an open Q&A session that goes on for weeks, perhaps with some cloak and dagger drama thrown in for effect)

Have they failed to produce any evidence at all of their claims?

(eg. "I can't get any documents out of the facility... I can't tell you what the mathematical formula is for this... I don't have any pictures... I don't have any video... I don't have any transcripts.")

Have they dodged or ignored any exacting questions that might identify them as a fraud?

(eg. "Oh, you've been to Groom Lake? What color are the cafeteria walls, if you don't mind?")

Do claim knowledge of a lot of unrelated facts (cross-compartment)?

(eg. "We work with Aliens, they helped us on the hyperdrive. But really what's amazing is that the stealth bombers use cloaking tech recovered from the pyramids".)

Do they claim to still be working at the facility?

(eg. "Oh, yeah, I'm an insider, but don't worry, I'm using a library terminal, so there's no way they could know it's me.").

Are they still around? Have they been around a while?

(eg. User was on X minutes ago, joined X Months/Years ago...)


If the answer to any of these questions is "Yes", start counting how many yesses you get. Each progressive "Yes" should be another red flag that the person claiming to work, or have worked, at a secret facility is little more than an attention-starved person trying to see how big a rise they can get out of the ATS community.

Good post.

I might add:

1. Before being given access to an especially sensitive project they run checks, such as giving the person access to something bizarre, such as 'alien technology' and see if they maintain their silence. Of course such 'technology' might just be a front, cobbled together with special effects, or other false, but convincing background (much like what Lazar was 'shown' at S-4). If they pass that test and have the needed aptitude and skills then they may be put on the 'real deal'. Of course there's no reason to tell them 'oh that alien stuff, that was just a test'.

The person might continue to believe the 'fake scenario'. This is, possibly, the basis behind some 'death bed' confessions, such as Corso's where people give up stuff that's 30 years old, mistaking such disinfo for the real thing. Of course they don't reveal their own (true) projects, which being compartmentalized are seen by them as fairly mundane for all they know.

If they fail this 'test scenario' they are still treated the same as what we might think a whistleblower might be, except that the 'threats' don't have any teeth; they remain threats. In effect such things if outed just add to the 'too ridiculous to believe' and the project is still safe, and the 'test scenario' is still re-usable.

2. People who come out in public and say 'oh whatever you can imagine and stuff you cannot imagine, we already have', are just 'talking' and have no basis upon which to make those claims. Or they are aiding the projects by either making such ridiculous claims that it's not really worth anything, or they carry on the propaganda, making our enemies think we may really have things.

I mean what can you do with 'we have projects you can't imagine'? Nothing.

As thelibra says, it makes getting secret info out to the public almost impossible, because nobody except the top people really know what is going on until the time is right.

Bear in mind these 'tests' don't have to be elaborate. It could involve just passing by a window and seeing little bug-eyed guys, or it could involve something even more mundane. Remeber Kelly Johnson fired a guy who just happened to answer the phones 'Skunk works', deeming that there's no room on his team for a guy with a loose sense of humor; and he was probaby right.

So unless someone has been with a project from its inception, and seen cross-platform info, or actually dissected an 'alien', there's literally no way for him or anyone who is not need to know to be sure what he saw is real.

Again, I'm not saying these exact scenarios happen. In effect I'm just showing, like thelibra, why there's ample reason for doubt about posts from 'secret base insiders'.

reply to post by thelibra


Extremely "common sensical " (if that's not a phrase, it should be!).
Thank you for placing this subject in a very easy to handle context. So many of us ( myself too), want to belive sooo badly...
But then again, if it were me, would i propagate my "knowledge " on a CT forum? no, probably not... if i were for real, i'd be dead by now, or deemed a psycho for my spoken meanderings, and "kept quiet".
ATS gives all of us a place to speculate, debate, and share what info we've all been able to come across so we can each form our OWN opinions;
What ATS does NOT do, and SHOULD never do, however, is allow an opening for every tom, dick and harry to fulfill thier fifteen minutes of fame ( or 30 plus pages ) of fantasy power trip.
Great thread, and thanks so much, again!

reply to post by thelibra


Interesting post, but I do see a few flaws in the logic here. Not all work done on new technologies are done in "hidden" facilities. Some secrets are hidden in plain site.

How do I know this? Well the reason is that my father was a plant manger at Textron fuel systems, ( that is the old name, it has changed names twice since being Textron) they made fuel nozzles for the F-16's as an example. They have also produced "experimental" components.

I do not know for sure if this information is on the net, however, I do know that the fan blades on the F-16 are "grown" to the shape they are in. similar to a crystals growth. ( not sure if this is still classified because the F-16's are still in service so thats all I will say about this)

The facility is in a very small town in the mid-west, not hidden at all, not even a fence around it.

Also, I have held a "Top Secret" clearance while in the Marines ( and yes I do have my DD-214 that can prove this ) I was a classified Message clerk. I had a copy of my background check and it was I think 27 pages long. It was fascinating reading to say the least.

You are correct that all projects get numeric designations but most do not do "all" the work, part of "compartmentalization" is that not all the work is done at the same place. This is not only for security, but also for technological reasons and cost.

Conversely, one who has access to "Eyes Only" documents can count on their life being an open book to The Company at any given time. Passive checks are always in place. Active checks will happen any time there is reason to, and without the employees knowledge or consent, and might even include full searches of one's homes, cars, accounts, etc.

This is not always the case, not once in the 20 years my father was plant manager did anyone ever search our home, and yes he held "eyes only" documents (my brother-in-law holds the position my father had, and he was a drug dealer in Highschool)

reply to post by thedigirati


Thanks for the additional insight Digi.

I mentioned the 'hide in plain sight' aspect which was used by the Lockheed facility in Palmdale.

However the original post was not about 'secret facilities' as much as it was about explaining those who might claim to be insiders exposing such facilities. There's little glamor in coming out and saying 'I was an insider at a facility in Burbank'. Much more exciting sounding to say 'Area 51', eh?

Compartmentalization is much more effective than any 'secret' facility. The only real reason for the location and layout of Area 51 was the runway, a flat dry lake bed. Of course being out of the way also became important and the isolation allowed for flaunting the environmental laws when they burned the classified hazardous materials.

If I were going to design a truly isolated facility back in the cold war days, I'd do it where it's not possible to get to by conventional travel. That means an island in the vast Pacific, or someplace in the Antarctic, deep underground, or even in a secret orbiting lab. There'd be no danger of anyone stumbling upon it, or bringing their friends to look at late night flights.

Thedigirati,

I don't disagree with anything you said. I think rather, I either simply wasn't clear enough in my OP or I left something out. Either way, I appreciate the additional insight

Originally posted by thedigirati
Interesting post, but I do see a few flaws in the logic here. Not all work done on new technologies are done in "hidden" facilities. Some secrets are hidden in plain site.

Oh, absolutely. Lockheed, General Dynamics, Bell/Textron facilities are all peppered around the DFW area, and in plain sight of anyone driving by, any of which will have classified or experimental components in development or use at any given time.

I particularly liked your next example:

Originally posted by thedigirati
...the fan blades on the F-16 are "grown" to the shape they are in. similar to a crystals growth. ( not sure if this is still classified because the F-16's are still in service so thats all I will say about this)

A great example. Your average laborer at LM wouldn't be likely to know the details of this, they might not even know they're grown. They might just, see "here's this part, put it there". They might have heard it's grown, but know nothing about the details.

Originally posted by thedigirati
You are correct that all projects get numeric designations but most do not do "all" the work, part of "compartmentalization" is that not all the work is done at the same place. This is not only for security, but also for technological reasons and cost.

Right, exactly. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that in the OP. It was a very long post, but it is what I tried to imply with the "pulse engine" example. However, it might have been more apt to say

"Department A in Location X might produce nothing more than a chemical compound that they have no idea what it's for other than to make a polymer. Department B in Location Y might produce a catalyst, with no more knowledge than their catalyst has to be able to produce a certain energy range when mixed with a particular acid. Department C in Location Z consists of workers whose only job is to take one of those bags of compound, stir it with a pre-measured amount of one of those other containers of industrial acid, and when it achieves a certain consistency, place the catalyst inside. Let it cook for a bit, then put a shipping label on it, where the resulting block of thermaplastic gets stored by Department D until someone in Department E needs to use it to make a wingskin out of."

Almost no one person in the chain really has any idea what came before or after, because of compartmentalization. And those who do get enough cross-compartmental knowledge to know the entire process only got to that position because they've proven time and again that they aren't the type that would suddenly go post it on a message board in a Q&A session for days on end.

Originally posted by thedigirati

Conversely, one who has access to "Eyes Only" documents can count on their life being an open book to The Company at any given time. Passive checks are always in place. Active checks will happen any time there is reason to, and without the employees knowledge or consent, and might even include full searches of one's homes, cars, accounts, etc.

This is not always the case, not once in the 20 years my father was plant manager did anyone ever search our home, and yes he held "eyes only" documents (my brother-in-law holds the position my father had, and he was a drug dealer in Highschool)

No argument here. I bolded the qualifiers in my original quote. Most likely your father never triggered an active check. Most plant manager's aren't that stupid and I'm sure your father was no exception. And even if there was reason to do an active check, searching the home would obviously be on the upper-end of extremes in regards to action to be taken.

I appreciate the additional input. You clarified and pointed out some things that I thought I already had, but apparently I had not done so, or at least, not very well.

Like Badge01 said, though, for the most part, this thread is primarily for the purpose of debunking the rather numerous amount of hoaxers who come onto ATS claiming to work at Area 51 or some other "Secret Facility".

And while it'd be nice to be able to just do what althea041724 suggests, and not give such people a platform to hoax from, we also have to give people enough rope to hang themselves with, and largely leave the decisions up to the readers and membership, unless of course the OP comes right out and admits to hoaxing.

Any chance, that on all future whistleblower threads, it could become ATS policy that whatever moderator gets there first puts a link to this thread?

It might help all those who reply to the whistleblower to know what to ask and what to look out for. It might also deter those who delight in yanking ATSers' chains.

Excellent thread by the way

This should be a sticky post in secret facilities forums. It's great!

As an ex-facility systems test analysis engineering developer on the 882-8A: Cloaking Systems project, I can say that everything in the post is absolutely true, except that the government has recently switched soft drink vendors to RC Cola, so we don't really have 'Coke' machines, per se.

Of course, having grown up in Texas, I believe the usage of lower-case 'coke' machine is syntactically correct. It is very common to use the word 'coke' in place of any variation of soda, pop, etc.

Even the phrase "Let's go get a coke" could mean going to get a Dr. Pepper, but everyone with Special Texas Compartment Level Access Magic 4-J will know what you mean.

Other than that, it looks great.

;-)

Disinformation can work in many ways and it is usually difficult to be certain of the content and the integrity of the poster. IMO the people that claim to have worked at secret facilities such as AREA 51 and say nothing weird goes on there therefore anyone who believes in alien reverse engineering is crazy are just as guilty as those who have claimed to have seen everything and believe the military industrial complex is nothing more than one gigantic conspiracy.

In other words people that make extraordinary claims and speak with certainity need to be more convincing than people who guess and speculate. I can go on with this but I think most people understand what I am getting at! If not then your probably new to "conspiracies".

cool topic... i'll just make a few comments.

Originally posted by thelibra
Each must generally pass a rigorous amount of screening for loyalty to one's employer, one's country, and one's moral and ethical compass

take that "moral and ethical" compass thing with a HUGE grain of salt. Moral and ethics are usually decided based on a simple psychological evaluation (usually in person, and in the form of a multiple choice scantron) - and on written questionnaires, etc. Essentially they just ask you "are you moral, do you have ethics?" Just say yes twice. (Of course that's simplified.. but unless you have a record already, it's not like they can weed people out).

Background checks are typically done on everyone. If the job requires clearance, these background checks, paperwork, interviews, etc, can go on for weeks or months before you even find out if you're hired. Desk Jockeys are typically subject to FAR more scrutiny than Laborers.

My experience contradicts this in some ways. I had a top-secret SCI clearance, and yes it took like 6 months to obtain my actual clearance ID, I was allowed to enter and exit the facility, as long as I had an escor - long before my clearance was officialt. But really, after the escort drops you off at your station / area / shop, then you are pretty much left to do whatever. I mean, if I wanted to, I could have easily started uploading all types of sensitive info to public FTPs and etc. Ironically, I didn't get my security clearance badge until a day after I lost my clearance (unrelated matter, won't get into that here).

Of course, I had no intention or reason to ever do such a thing - and I didn't. Just saying, after going through the "strict" screening process for clearance, I was amazed at how liberal the process was. Really, if you can keep your nose clean for the 6 months-year it takes to get the clearance, you are golden. I had PLENTY of dirt that could have been dug up on me that would have prevented me from getting clearance, but they either didn't find it, or didn't care. I'm guessing the former.

Typically, if one is the sort who could ever be tempted to run publicly with company secrets, or sell them, you simply don't get hired. u

totally false. well, i guess that word "typically" makes it true, but it's misleading. Technically, the "typical" person does not even get a job that demands clearance, so I guess it's also not typical that those people would be spies / opportunists / traitors / etc. That's just because they aren't typical in the first place. Fact is, temptation can come from any number of sources. An honest person can be tempted, and a dishonest person can avoid temptation.

The psychological, criminal, economic, and other filters one must pass through just to get hired are quite accurate, and have had many decades to hone. They are not foolproof, but it should give you a good idea of the type of person who ever even gets to set foot within the building.

I think I already went over this one, but I'll just restate that the screening process is a joke, and very misleading. Unless you lived outside of your home country for more than a year, or unless you have a criminal record... there's a slim chance you will be rejected if even given the opportunity to apply in the first place.

The foreground and background checks (ie. bank accounts, psychological profiles, medical records, loyalty assessments, outside-work monitoring, etc.) continue off and on throughout one's employment, subject of course, to demands of one's job. Someone whose job it is to retrieve, stock, and inventory parts in a warehouse is going to have very little access to sensitive documents, but at $700/bolt, has access to some very expensive hardware they might be tempted to sell, so their financial transactions might be a lot more subject to monitoring than their internet forum usage.

totally true. I knew lots of people that lost their clearance for having too much debt. The simple reason is that people with large amounts of debt are a risk of selling secrets / info / etc.

Compartmentalization

absolutely. this is probably the best safeguard to privacy and security. Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. Of course this is a huge problem with efficiency, but it's a tradeoff. I still wonder to this day what the heck they were using all the stuff I was working on for. Since I was compartmentalized as well, I really never knew what I was doing, other than really small specific tasks.

to be continued... (running out of characters to type!)

[edit on 12-2-2008 by scientist]

[edit on 12-2-2008 by scientist]

Gaining Clearance Levels
Clearance is not something you walk into the company with. It is not something that is arbitrarily handed to you just because a job needs to be done. It is usually not even something you can shoot for, it just happens along the way, through repeatedly proving your silence and loyalty, and the passage of time.

we obviously have very different experiences in this matter. I saw plenty of people being "pushed through" the system to get clearance all the time (albeit temporary clearance, they had access all the same).

In any event, the "altruistic whistleblower" does not stick around and continue to report from within the company.

agreed. not only would this be a legal issue, but I would fear for my own safety and well-being in that scenario. staying within the organization you are blowing the whistle on is just dumb, and probably a red flag as you state.

Technological whistleblowers simply don't happen. You go into these jobs, these fields, knowing full well that what you might learn, experience, or develop could be of Earth-shattering consequence, and that you must remain silent on it, or you simply don't make the cut.

that's a naive outlook, and riddled with errors. There are plenty of people that go into these jobs for the simple fact they will get to learn "earth-shattering" things. They don't necessarily feel obligated to the organization revealing these things, and in some cases they feel the opposite - disdain for keeping such info private. This is probably what triggers most whistle blowers in the first place, is it not?

In other words...
Don't buy into people on an internet forum claiming to have worked at a secret facility, unless they have delivered indisputable, or nearly indisputable proof, up front

I have a huge problem with that. basically, you are asking people to put their entire lives, and their families lives at risk, just for the sake of appeasing the skepticism of people on an internet forum? Please stop me if I am being over dramatic.

Great post.
The thing with the ex employee posts are that we are told to give them a chance to have their say when you can tell from the first post how likely it is they are telling the truth. This just drags the post out and gives the op a kick out of it.
It should be ATS policy to read this post. Fantastic.

reply to post by scientist

My experience contradicts this in some ways. I had a top-secret SCI clearance, and yes it took like 6 months to obtain my actual clearance ID,

Just saying, after going through the "strict" screening process for clearance, I was amazed at how liberal the process was. Really, if you can keep your nose clean for the 6 months-year it takes to get the clearance, you are golden. I had PLENTY of dirt that could have been dug up on me that would have prevented me from getting clearance, but they either didn't find it, or didn't care. I'm guessing the former.

I think I already went over this one, but I'll just restate that the screening process is a joke, and very misleading. Unless you lived outside of your home country for more than a year, or unless you have a criminal record...

I think everyone has a different experience and maybe depends on the job too.

The process my husband had to go through to get his clearance was way more involved and very far from liberal. They interviewed people we both knew from all over the country. Even my parents were interviewed. And so was I. They even came to my home. They say they go back 10yrs....but they actually went back a LOT further then that.

The questions asked were way more in depth then "do you have morals/ethics". They asked things I never would have thought of. And an answer would of course lead to more questions.


Again, his process was anything but liberal and if my husband had a speck of dirt....he would have been passed over.

So, like I said....every person must have a different experience.
Because my husband's experience is nothing like you have described.


[edit on 12-2-2008 by greeneyedleo]

to be more specific... yes, they contacted people from my past, people I hadnt even talked to in over a decade... but still, they must have missed a LARGE amount of "dirt."

Point is, unless they talk to someone that doesn't care much for you - your friends and familiy will try to help you out by answering questions the way they are expecting to have them answered. Like any jopb interview, your friends aren;t going to say "oh ya, he gets drunk ALL the time."

They will say "ive known John Doe for 15 years, and hes responsible, professional, etc."

reply to post by scientist



Well, they didn't just contact friends and family.

Im just saying that his experience seems to be very different then your experience. I think its a little false to say that these clearance checks are done in such a nonchalant kind of way and are a joke. That is certainly not the case for my husband and many others I know.

In regards to your large amount of dirt. I don't know what to say about that. Guess it depends on what you call dirt and the facts surround it.

How did you loose your clearance?

I suppose I'm still dealing with a touch of hyperbole. Yes, they contacted other people aside from friends and family. Previous teachers, employers, coworkers, etc. But really, I'm trying to say that the only people that can really discredit you are those closest to you (friends and family). Now if your teacher / coworkers know about all kinds of inappropriate acts you are involved with, of course you will be denied. If you are the type of person that lets all your private matters into the ears/eyes of such people, then I guess it shouldn't be such a surprise to be denied clearance.

Also, I don't mean it's a joke in that anyone can get clearance. Rather, I meant it's a joke compared to how strict the process really was. Perhaps the facilities I worked out of were low-priority, but I doubt it. really, there's no way to tell, since I was compartmentalized anyways. There were certainly armed guards at every single checkpoint / doorway / staircase / elevator / etc. though. Seemed serious enough at the time. So no, it's not a liberal process in the same context as applying for a library card is liberal. Just not as hard to obtain clearance as you might suspect, especially for younger people that don't have a huge history to dig up in the first place.

no comment on the clearance loss. I'll let your imagination deal with that one

Originally posted by scientist

Perhaps the facilities I worked out of were low-priority, but I doubt it. really, there's no way to tell, since I was compartmentalized anyways. There were certainly armed guards at every single checkpoint / doorway / staircase / elevator / etc. though. Seemed serious enough at the time.

Dude

Being in prison doesn't count as working at a top secret facility.

:-)

A few multiple replies:

Dagar, Neo2012, Emsed1:
Thank you for the compliments, but if we forced people to read this post (or any other post besides, like, the TAC or something), then, quite simply, it loses its effectiveness, because we remove the power of choice from the individual. The same goes for if we just automatically closed posts where people claimed to be Area 51 workers. People have to have the opportunity and choice to speculate and believe, or otherwise there's no real point to our entire content ecosystem. While hoaxes are against the TAC, a hoax has to be pretty conclusively proven, or admitted by the OP, before we close a thread, lest we risk people accusing ATS itself of hushing up "the truth."

As such, the best I can do with the thread is to provide it, and let others choose to read it, draw their own conclusions, and maybe take that knowledge with them to the next thread that involves a so-called "secret facility worker."


Scientist:
As Greeneyedleo already pointed out, as did you yourself, there's a pretty big variance of scale. There's not only a huge gap in procedure and formality between levels of clearance, but also between companies. Where I work, for instance, you have to have clearance to perform tech support on a particular account, and their background check was much like the way you described, pretty much a joke, and half the papers got lost along the way. Of course we're also talking about people who work in the McDonald's of the Computer industry. Their "clearance" was, yes, technically an approval, but they will never see the likes of an Eyes-Only Document, be shown secrets, or amazing technology. They'll be doing things like password resets and reinstalling MS Office.

Conversely, where my father works, things are very formal, very serious, and unlike where you apparently worked, they do not simply give you upper levels of clearance walking into the building. Most levels even have a minimum number of years working for the company before you are even considered. Where my grandfather worked, he couldn't even talk about his role, even years after retirement. Most everything he wrote, and there were many technical papers he wrote, have YET to be declassified, and he's been dead for nearly 20 years now, and had been retired for 20 years before that. When my sister applied to work at one particular facility, some of the "moral and ethical compass" questions kept her awake at night for the next week, because they were questions she'd never even dreamt of.

So I have little doubt that an experience like yours is possible, but you shouldn't assume it is the norm, or that it is that way across the board. I have very little doubt that different companies are going to differently treat different levels of clearance (and I use that as a generic term for the number of "eyes only" items you qualify for, not the typical "Government Clearance" packet that some jobs make you fill out).

Greeneyedleo:
Thanks for sharing your family's experience. You were able to answer Scientist's questions better than I could have.

Originally posted by thelibra
So I have little doubt that an experience like yours is possible, but you shouldn't assume it is the norm, or that it is that way across the board.

We should say the same thing about your original post, unless of course you're claiming that the way you say it works is truly how its done at places like Area 51. I guess you could only make that claim if you actually worked at a place like that, so if that's the case I guess I have only one more thing to say:

Let the debunking begin!

just for clarification, ive had clearance in a few places, all very different. so yes I agree, it totally varies.

The scary thing is that the "joke" process I referred to above was for clearance with DoD. Not some private company, the freaking DoD.