Ursula Wilder is a spook. We can say that because Ursula Wilder has already had her cover blown. She is a psychologist at the CIA, and was interviewed by NPR1 for a piece about keeping spies from spilling secrets. If you live or work in the northern Virginia area, you are, statistically speaking, within shouting distance of someone with some kind of security clearance. You may live next to a spy. Or be one yourself (Yes, we mean you. We’re onto you, chum). If you are going through a divorce, what damage can your ex-wife do to your security clearance? What damage can you do to yourself?
How Divorce Can Affect Your Security Clearance
Your divorce can affect your security clearance in only three ways:
- You have a divorce before you need a security clearance, and must trust your ex-wife not to sabotage your chances of gaining that clearance
- You have a security clearance before you get a divorce, and must trust your ex-wife not to destroy that clearance by divulging information about you out of vengeance, spite, emotion or anger
- You accidentally destroy your security clearance through your own behaviors
In the first two cases, you are at the mercy of your ex-wife. You have some tools in your sleuth’s toolkit to deploy, but you ultimately will have to get your ex-wife to cooperate. In the last case, you could be your own worst enemy.
Come Clean with SF86
Filling out Standard Form 86 (SF86) is your opportunity to “come clean” with any concerns you have about a divorce in your past. Identify your ex-wife (Section 17) and provide contact information so that the investigators can contact her to ensure she will reveal nothing about your work then or now. Identify your Virginia divorce, too (Section 28).
If you have concerns about her reliability or trustworthiness to protect your security clearance, state that in your SF86 and leave it to your prospective employer to determine. The more open you are about your past divorce, the more likely you are to both win and protect your security clearance.
Lawyer Up with a Family Attorney
Your strongest tool to protect yourself is your attorney. Before filling out an SF86, contact a family lawyer. The divorce is not your vulnerability; financial entanglements or extramarital affairs are. If your affair involves a foreign national, for example, you imperil your clearance by your own actions.
Your divorce itself is not a security issue; contrary to Hollywood portrayals, agencies requiring security clearances understand you are not superhuman and will have relationships. They also understand that not all those relationships will work out. So it is not a mark against you that you either had a divorce in the past or need to get divorced while holding down a security clearance.
Leaky Lips are a Vulnerability
Wilder points out that spies, believe it or not, are just like everyone else and prone to vulnerabilities. Divorce, financial constraints, problems with teenagers — all these can be stressors that make professionals with security clearances vulnerable. While your ex-wife might be the source of a leak that ruins your security clearance, you are just as likely to be that source, too, from the pressures the personal conflicts are causing.
In Wilder’s work, she tries to prevent security damage by spotting vulnerable employees ahead of any leaks. You have to take the same approach with your divorce and its two weak spots:
- Your ex-wife
- You
Either one of you could be responsible for saying or doing something that destroys your security clearance. Divorce is one of four ways your spouse can destroy your security clearance, say experts at Government Executive. They suggest talking to your security officer about your divorce (past or future), to be as transparent as you can as quickly as you can.
Was Your Job the Cause of Your Divorce?
The daily stress of having a highly secure or secretive job is, actually, a leading cause of divorce among members of the CIA (and, one can extrapolate, among the other 16+ intelligence agencies). If you have a security clearance that does not permit you to discuss your work with your spouse, you can expect your spouse to at least be curious, and in many cases interpret innocent actions as dishonesty. Your very actions may turn your wife into an amateur spy.
When your marriage eventually breaks under the strain, the mistrust is compounded for both of you:
- Will she reveal something she cannot?
- What else was he hiding from me?
- Will she ruin my career by making public statements?
- What can I safely tell my lawyer or the judge without fear of some kind of Borne Identity reprisal?
- What will get sealed by the courts and what will become a public record?
If you can get away from your handlers and find a secure line, telephone The Firm For Men at 757-383-9184, or contact us online. We can help with every facet of your divorce, from protecting your career to maintaining your security clearance and insulating you from your ex-spouse. [If you cannot contact us online, please provide the usual chalk signal on that mailbox on that certain corner. You know the one.]
1. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558160451/how-do-you-stop-a-spy-from-spilling-secrets
