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CASE

Correspondence in a DOHA case

Each letter in a contested case: what it is, what it means, what to do, what happens next, and what the decided record shows. Select the letter you received.

Before any decision

Interrogatory (LOI)

The government's case

SORFORMNotice of Hearing

Decision and appeal

The decisionAppeal Board

Written Interrogatory, also styled Letter of Interrogatory or Supplemental Information Request

In plain terms

A letter of interrogatory is a set of written questions from the person reviewing your background (the adjudicator). They ask you to clarify or update something in your file, most often the current status of a debt, a course of treatment, or another issue the investigation surfaced. It is one of the recognized chances to put your explanation, and any information that supports your side, on the record before anything is decided.

Where you are in the process

You are still in the review stage, before any formal charges. If your answers resolve the concern, the case can proceed to a grant with nothing further. If they do not, the next step can be a formal Statement of Reasons (or, for a current clearance holder, a letter of intent to revoke). Most cases end favorably at this stage: in 2022, out of roughly 150,000 contractor background investigations, only about 2,500 became a Statement of Reasons.

The deadline

There is no single fixed deadline here; the letter itself states how long you have to reply, and the answer is due within that window. Answers are given under penalty of perjury, which means they are signed as a formal statement that they are true.

Work out your exact dates with the deadline calculator.

Points to note

Whatever you write, and whatever you attach, becomes a permanent part of your file. If the case later goes to a hearing or a decision on the written record, those same answers and documents return among the government's exhibits. Answers and attachments are evidence from the time they are submitted.

The CASE Prep service relates a stated situation to the guidelines and the decided record.

If the document received is not correspondence in a contested case (a questionnaire, a release, a fingerprint request, a processing notice, or an access agreement), see the clearance document directory, which identifies each form and notice by its number.

How the process worksThe letters sit inside a published sequence: interrogatories, the SOR, a hearing or the written record, a decision, and an appeal.

A contested case follows a published path: a Statement of Reasons, the government's written list of its concerns (an SOR), a written answer, a hearing or a decision on the written record, the judge's decision, and in some cases an appeal.

Read the stages of a DOHA case · Ask a question about the process

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