Department of Energy security-clearance hearings
The Department of Energy holds its own security-clearance hearings, separate from the Defense Department process that produces most of the decisions on this site. These are the Energy Department’s published hearing decisions, kept as a separate record.
Two things to keep in mind about these numbers.
1. These are hearing decisions only. The Energy Department resolves many cases without a hearing. What you see here is the set that reached a hearing and produced a published decision, so it does not describe how the Energy Department decides cases overall.
2. A favorable decision is not the final word. In the Energy Department process, a decision in the person’s favor can still be appealed by the agency. So a favorable result here is what the judge decided, not necessarily the settled outcome.
The favorable share is counted only among decisions with a clear favorable or unfavorable result. Where the decision was mixed or its result could not be read cleanly, it is left out of that rate rather than guessed.
What the hearings are most often about
The concerns raised most often in these published Energy Department hearings, by count of decisions. The Energy Department has applied the same lettered guidelines as the Defense side since 2017.
- Alcohol consumption (Guideline G)649
- Personal conduct (Guideline E)424
- Financial considerations (Guideline F)316
- Criminal conduct (Guideline J)315
- Psychological conditions (Guideline I)279
- Drug involvement (Guideline H)155
The words are different from the Defense process
The Energy Department uses its own terms. If you are moving between the two processes, these do not line up one to one.
- The notice of concerns
- A Notification Letter, with a Summary of Security Concerns attached (not a Statement of Reasons)
- Who decides
- An Administrative Judge in the Office of Hearings and Appeals (older decisions say Hearing Officer)
- The government’s lawyer
- DOE Counsel (not Department Counsel)
- The appeal body
- The DOE Headquarters Appeal Panel
- The rulebook
- 10 CFR Part 710
Where this comes from
Decisions are the Department of Energy’s own published records from the Office of Hearings and Appeals, under 10 CFR Part 710. They are kept entirely separate from the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals record used elsewhere on this site, and no figure on the site ever combines the two. This is general information drawn from public decisions, not legal advice about any particular case.
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