Most of the stuff you're probably thinking about is fine as long as you own up to it up front. It's when they catch you in a lie that you're going to have a lo

Most of the stuff you're probably thinking about is fine as long as you own up to it up front. It's when they catch you in a lie that you're going to have a lot of trouble. If you tell them you never smoked pot and they find a picture of you inhaling on Facebook you're in big trouble. Even then you might get a clearance, though you get the treatment first. The hassles go up as your clearance does. Depending on what you're doing you may be precluded from travelling to anyplace on this year's list of villainous countries. I found the biggest problem with DoD work came when I left it and started interviewing for jobs in the commercial sector. I couldn't tell them what I'd been doing for the last eight years. I could say something like "I worked on a large project written in C", but anything more than that was verboten.