USAO Law Clerk Position - Drug Test? Forum

[ScaredWorkedBored]

Is the background check here more extensive than C&F you think?

C&F (mostly) uses paper records. The federal background investigations use FBI agents who are, among other things, trying to verify you're not working for the Russians, the Mafia, or the Russian Mafia.

Apart from being tremendously unethical and per se illegal, lying about anything regarding security clearance employment is very knuckleheaded.

[Anonymous User]

I was drug tested for a law clerk position at the USAO, but it was in the southern half of the country, and did a lot of drug cases. Urine test in town, couldn't start without it.

[eandy]

Because they're going to interview everyone you've ever lived with (such as, say, random college roommates) and will ask the people you list as references for other people who know you that they can talk to. The odds of EVERY SINGLE ONE of the random people who lived near you / encountered you socially / worked with you / went to school with you that they could potentially talk to lying to an FBI background investigator about your drug use when they have nothing to gain from doing so is pretty low.

I have a set of roommates that I had a terrible relationship with who would probably lie and make up stuff to an FBI investigator just to be terrible people. Great.

[Anonymous User]

Do regulatory agencies typically do this intensive of a background check as well?

[CLS2011]

I have a set of roommates that I had a terrible relationship with who would probably lie and make up stuff to an FBI investigator just to be terrible people. Great.

If that was the case I would guess the best course of action would probably be to tell them going in that you had random roommates who irrationally dislike you and you fear may try to sabotage your candidacy by making things up about you. It sounds sort of sketchy, but maybe you decrease the odds of them believing that one random person over you when no one else they talk to (and it's a lot of people, including many who would have known you in that same time period) corroborates whatever that person was to say. I'm not speaking from experience here and don't know for sure if that would be the best course of action, but it's probably what I would do if I was facing that situation and I had a legitimate and well-based fear that someone would be willing to lie to federal agents just to screw me over. That being said, I doubt there's many people willing to swear to a bald-faced lie to federal background investigators just to keep someone they know unemployed.