Peace Corps Volunteers Need Not Apply
by Sean Hackbarth
Jeff Quinton sat through an NSA employment pitch. It was mildly interesting to see how U.S. spooks sold their agency to potential employees. When it came to getting a security clearance I really paid attention:
As most people who have done anything involving a clearance know, recent Peace Corps service is a definite bar to a clearance. During the first hour, the female recruiter had couched it in terms of the Peace Corps and the NSA have conflicting missions, but it was later pointed out that the travel and the problems in doing background checks were a factor.
No, I didn’t know joining the Peace Corps was a detriment to getting a clearance. I have another reason not to sign up.
“So You Want to Work for the NSA?”
In spite of the initial confusion, it IS the travel that’s an issue. For a high enough clearance, the provenance of the candidate is essential. Been there: I needed a cleaarance when I was in the Army to work my communications job (who needs the information gets a clearance appropriate to the classification of that information; Who has the keys to a lot of information gets a helluva clearance). There was a pretty thorough background check of every place I had lived.
For the kind of work NSA does they are going to be very careful about vetting their people.