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Decisions by country · Guideline B · Foreign Influence

Ties to Syria in decided clearance cases

What the decided public record shows for cases in which ties to Syria were alleged. Ties to any country are not themselves disqualifying, and every case turns on its own facts. This is decided history, not a prediction, and it says nothing about any nationality or community.

Decided cases

46

hearing-level decisions naming this country in the text

Granted

35%

16 granted · 30 denied or revoked

Ties living in the United States

at least 3

decisions stating expressly that the relative or contact lives in the United States, so this is a floor

The ties these cases involved

The kinds of relationship identified on Syria allegations in these cases. A case can involve several, and the bars count cases rather than outcomes, so they carry no colour.
Parent in foreign country23 cases
Sibling in foreign country21 cases
Unspecified foreign relationship18 cases
In law in foreign country13 cases
Spouse dual or foreign citizen8 cases
Financial support to foreign relative8 cases
Extended family in foreign country5 cases

Circumstances credited in granted cases

Circumstances the judge expressly credited among granted Syria cases where that detail was extracted. Extraction covers a subset of the record, so these are raw counts and not rates.
  • deep U.S. ties · credited in 8 granted cases
  • severed foreign contact · credited in 1 granted case

Recent decided examples

  • ISCR Case No. 21-00744Granted2022

    The applicant in this case was a 73-year-old civilian seeking a security clearance sponsored by a defense contractor. The Department of Defense (DoD) issued a Statement of Reasons (SOR) citing concern…

  • ISCR Case No. 18-00216Granted2019

    The applicant in this case was a contractor for the Department of Defense (DOD) who sought a security clearance. The adjudicative guideline at issue was Guideline B, concerning Foreign Influence. The …

  • ISCR Case No. 24-01091Denied2025

    The applicant in this case sought a security clearance and was evaluated under Guideline B (foreign influence) and Guideline L (outside activities). The Statement of Reasons (SOR) outlined concerns pr…

  • ISCR Case No. 23-01788Denied2024

    The applicant in this case was a 30-year-old Syrian-born naturalized U.S. citizen who applied for a security clearance. The adjudicative guidelines at issue were Guideline H (drug involvement and subs…

Search all Guideline B decisions mentioning Syria

Other countries in the record

How these numbers are measured

Scope: decided hearing-level cases whose Guideline B allegations name this country. The country field is free text in the source, so the variants observed in the record are mapped onto one canonical name and nothing is guessed; records naming several countries in one field are excluded rather than split. A case naming two countries counts once under each. Counts of country risk and of ties living in the United States are counted only where the decision says so expressly, so both are floors. Pages exist only for countries with at least 25 decided cases.

Reading the statistics

  • Granted = access granted or continued; Denied = denied or revoked.
  • Grant rate = granted ÷ (granted + denied).
  • † marks figures based on fewer than 20 cases, too few to be reliable.
  • Hovering any rate shows its statistical range (a 95% confidence interval).
  • Figures are descriptive counts over decided, public DOHA ISCR decisions, never predictions or assessments of any pending case.

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