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Having been the clearance monkey for work as of late, I can give a quick comment regarding the clearances. First, YOU MUST BE A US CITIZEN. Second, most sins are forgivable provided they are far enough in the past. Thirdly, while a few agencies conduct their own background checks (State, CIA, etc), the bulk of USG clearances - to include the military - are conducted by the Office of Personnel Management. There are two components of the clearance: the investigation and the adjudication. OPM investigates you (7 years back for a SECRET and 10 years back for a TS/SCI) and then sends the investigation to the requesting agency's clearance clearing facility and they determine if you're a douche bag or not. Once you have one clearance awarded, you can transport that clearance to another agency (this was put into law to limit duplication of efforts some years ago). It must be a final clearance however. . . All investigations are not equal as well. Having gone through both OPM and State, I can say that while the OPM is thorough, the State department is EXTREMELY thorough. I can't imagine what some of the other OGAs do. . . Hope this helps.

As for the Ranger vs SF. . . we all know that ninjas and robots are the coolest, so I'm not even sure why we're talking about it. I'm going to be a ninja when I grow up. Or a fireman.

Stay safe,

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