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Candor in the record

Honesty allegations in the decided record

About 22% of decided hearing-level cases in the record include an honesty allegation: a claim that the applicant falsified a form, omitted required information, or was not forthright with an investigator. How those cases were resolved is the strongest single association measured in the record. Every number below is measured history shown with the count behind it, never advice and never a prediction.

No honesty allegation

39% granted · 8,040 granted · 12,629 denied

An honesty allegation was made

18% granted · 1,048 granted · 4,805 denied

The judge found a deliberate falsification

3% granted · 133 granted · 4,037 denied

The accusation was rebutted

62% granted · 739 granted · 462 denied

An allegation is not a finding

An honesty allegation is a claim the government must prove, and judges decide it case by case. Where the judge found the falsification deliberate, 3.2% of cases were granted (133 of 4,170). Where the applicant rebutted the accusation and the judge found no deliberate falsification, 61.5% were granted (739 of 1,201), a higher rate than cases with no honesty allegation at all (38.9%). In the remaining 482 cases the decision records no clear finding either way, and those were granted 36.5% of the time.

Correcting the record first

In 189 decided cases the record shows the applicant corrected the omission or the false answer before being confronted with it. Those cases were granted 66.7% of the time (126 of 189), against 16.3% for the other 5,664 cases carrying an honesty allegation. The security rules themselves list a prompt, good-faith correction made before being confronted as a recognized way to reduce the concern, and the decided record reflects it.

By kind of allegation

A case can appear under more than one kind. Each link opens the decided cases behind the number.

What was allegedly concealed

The subject the allegation says was hidden, as the decision states it.

  • Financial issues

    Cases
    1,872
    Granted
    352
    Denied
    1,520
    Grant rate

  • Criminal history

    Cases
    1,544
    Granted
    214
    Denied
    1,330
    Grant rate

  • Other subjects

    Cases
    1,210
    Granted
    206
    Denied
    1,004
    Grant rate

  • Drug involvement

    Cases
    770
    Granted
    83
    Denied
    687
    Grant rate

  • Employment history

    Cases
    390
    Granted
    52
    Denied
    338
    Grant rate

  • Foreign contacts or interests

    Cases
    111
    Granted
    21
    Denied
    90
    Grant rate

  • Mental-health history

    Cases
    45
    Granted
    7
    Denied
    38
    Grant rate
    7 granted of 45

  • Education or credentials

    Cases
    44
    Granted
    6
    Denied
    38
    Grant rate
    6 granted of 44

  • Alcohol history

    Cases
    18
    Granted
    1
    Denied
    17
    Grant rate
    1 granted of 18

  • Sexual behavior

    Cases
    11
    Granted
    1
    Denied
    10
    Grant rate
    1 granted of 11

The same issue, disclosed and undisclosed

For each underlying issue the record splits two ways: cases where the issue stood on its own, and cases where the judge also weighed an allegation that the applicant hid that same issue. Issues with fewer than 75 concealment cases are not shown.

  • F · Financial Considerations

    Issue alone, cases
    13,599
    Issue alone, grant rate
    With a concealment allegation, cases
    1,786
    With a concealment allegation, grant rate

  • J · Criminal Conduct

    Issue alone, cases
    2,984
    Issue alone, grant rate
    With a concealment allegation, cases
    928
    With a concealment allegation, grant rate

  • H · Drug Involvement and Substance Misuse

    Issue alone, cases
    3,086
    Issue alone, grant rate
    With a concealment allegation, cases
    541
    With a concealment allegation, grant rate

  • B · Foreign Influence

    Issue alone, cases
    3,875
    Issue alone, grant rate
    With a concealment allegation, cases
    82
    With a concealment allegation, grant rate

The two groups differ in more than disclosure, so the gap between them is an association rather than a cause.

How these numbers are measured

Scope: decided hearing-level industrial cases in the public DOHA record, 26,522 cases through 2026-09-11, and the record updates as new decisions are ingested. An honesty allegation means a Personal Conduct allegation that the applicant falsified a security form, omitted required information, was not forthright in an interview, or falsified employment or other records. These are identified from the per-allegation case profiles, which cover essentially every case where Personal Conduct was charged.

Whether the judge found the falsification deliberate, and whether the record shows a correction made before being confronted, are read from each decision. A case is counted as granted or denied by the decision’s own overall outcome, using the same two words as the rest of the site. Percentages are printed only where a group holds 50 or more cases; smaller groups print the raw counts, and † marks groups under 20.

An association, not proof of cause: the groups being compared differ in many ways. The same facts that support a finding of deliberate falsification also tend to make the rest of a case harder. A 2018 Carnegie Mellon research draft that hand-tagged about 5,000 cases from an earlier copy of this record reached the same conclusion; the numbers on this page are measured directly from the current record.

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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