Public Trust Background Investigation?

Question

When you have had a "public trust" investigation completed, does that mean that you are at a halfway point to a secret clearance?

If so, or if not, can you please explain?

Thanks

Answer 1

A couple things you might want to understand:

A Public Trust is not exactly a clearance. It is permission to handle sensitive, non-classified documents.

A "Confidential" clearance is the lowest level clearance you can get. "Secret" is mid-level. "Top Secret" is the highest level. Each level has their own sub-levels of varying clearances.

That said, if your Public Trust investigation is completed, you now have Government permission to handle sensitive, but non-classified work (this is typically biographical information, believe it or not many intelligence analysts only have a Public Trust).

You do not need a Public Trust to obtain a Clearance, though, it certainly doesn't hurt as they can use your BI from the Trust investigation to make a decision on most low level clearances. But by no means does it give you an edge or "half way point." It may just shorten any future investigations by a few months.