By John V. Berry, Esq., www.berrylegal.com
This article outlines the security clearance appeals process for those applying for clearances with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). As we have discussed in other blog articles, the U.S. Government security clearance process is not run by one federal agency. The clearance appeals process is governed by Executive Order 12698, which delegates the clearance process to the different federal agencies. The clearance appeals processes generally falls into 2 main groups, those run by the Intelligence Community (IC) and those run by the Department of Defense (DoD) and other non-intelligence gathering agencies. With that background, it is important to note that each federal agency maintains their own internal security clearance process with their own unique procedures.
In addition to security clearances processed by the NRO, many other federal agencies maintain their own procedures and personnel that process their own security clearance decisions for federal employees and government contractors (e.g. DOD, NGA, CIA, DOJ, etc). It is important to be familiar with each process when appealing an adverse security clearance decision. This article focuses on security clearance appeals for government contractors at the NRO.