Acclaim Aerospace ⚙️ Swiss Lathe Ultra Precision Machining ✈️ Aviation 🚀 Space🗽Defense 🔫 Pew Pews 🚑 Medical 📲 Electronics 🤓 Chief Engineer & Machinerer 🏫 STEM Ed Advocate 🐝 GA Tech Yellow Jacket
My lowest job offer graduating GA Tech was the C.I.A. for $24,000/yr. I wanted to be like Oscar Goldman in charge of bionic secret agents fighting bad guys to keep America safe. The "interviews" were, uhhhm, interesting. Strangely not a lot of technical content and far more heavily weighted on psychological assessments. Pretty sure my hotel room was bugged too. There was also what I would call "loyalty" tests where you were not supposed to know you were being tested but to me it was fairly obvious. One test in particular was to see if I would cheat on my girlfriend. I won't go into the details but I thought the methods were really egregious. That's the moment when I realized the G-men that I grew up admiring in my youth were truly fictional. No, they were not OSS cold war heroes with a whiskey in one hand and a Smith & Wesson in the other, keeping us safe from the Communist threat. Something very different actually. I was already on the fence due to the crazy low job offer. $24k to live in Wash DC was pretty low even by 1994 standards. Definitely would have to rent a shoebox apartment. And then you couldn't tell anyone about your job, not even family. If I accepted the job my business card would have said I was an "analyst" at a totally made up computer company - sort of like James Bond's "Universal Exports" but nowhere near as cool. So you basically have to lie all the time and lying actually becomes your biggest core competency. But talking to my Grandpa about it helped me make the decision. Grandpa was a WWII commanding pilot and later Korea and Vietnam too, who had TS level security due to his involvement with nukes and later the space program, and had a lot of first hand experience working with intelligence organizations. Truthfully I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone about this but I was struggling internally and needed some mentoring, and felt Grandpa was uniquely qualified for that help. He basically said, "you don't want to work for those guys. They're a bunch of *ssholes who only care about power and themselves. Everything changed after the war (which meant WWii to him)". Then he told me the story when he was piloting a squadron on a training missing in the Bermuda Triangle and encountered a UFO or actually UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) and how he had to lie about it for 40 years. Maybe I'll work up the courage to talk about that sometime, but it was really unsettling. But anyways after talking to my Grandpa, I decided to turn down the job offer and work as an engineer for a F500 company instead. I'm glad I did. I don't think there are any Oscar Goldman's out there, or at least not anymore. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address.
When I was at university for my engineering degree (still in Russia), the university's administration had an agreement with a government agency that had a function similar to that of the NSA called "FAPSI". They had their own military academy, the Institute of Cryptography and Communications but they wanted a (cheaper) way to teach future civilian employees rather than officers. From about 160 students, they selected 20 to form a special group. Taught them a little more specific mathematics, information security standards, etc. Later, because we all were dual-enrolled in the reserve officer training program, we had to go to a bootcamp before we received our officer rank. So I was in the same unit with those guys. I knew them superficially before, but in the bootcamp, I learned they all had "very flexible" moral systems. Some of them genuinely were motivated to do something useful for the country, but their willingness to do something questionable was also strikingly strong. They universally didn't like anyone sticking out in any way, in a very collectivist manner. Those features were way more prominent than anyone's interest in technology.
Tom Ritter
3w
How many additional fake wars and assassinated presidents would it have taken for you to come to that conclusion on your own? We have not fought a justified war in over 70 years. Intelligence/Organized crime have been in charge ever since they sprayed JFK's brain all over Dealey Plaza. We've only gone 4 years in my entire lifetime without a slew of fake CIA wars. Ukraine is 100% a CIA war. Iraq Afghanistan Vietnam Korea All complete BS. Literally not a true story among that entire list.
A since deceased friend of mine, both of his parents worked for the see eye aye. Their existence no doubt influenced some of his idiosyncratic behavior. He would check window and door locks multiple times before leaving his house. He said growing up there were guns hidden everywhere in the house, toilet tanks, under the coffee table, etc. After he passed away I helped his mother clean his place out. She brought a friend with her to assist. I asked the guy if he used to work with her. He replied, "No, I'm a chef." I thought, "Yeah, so was Steven Seagal."
James P.
3w
Back in the day, graduates with upper firsts from the University of London in the UK were automatically selected for interview with 'The Foreign Office' which was a front name for Military Intelligence divisions - MI5 or MI6. My mum was offered it and turned it down. Eisenhower was a good man. My grandfather was part of Field Marshall Montgomery's personal staff and cooked them their final meal the night before Operation Overlord. I've got the only pictures of that event only due to Eisenhower trusting Monty's trust in his staff. The Flemings are interesting throughout history. My friend is one of the clan. Christopher Lee the actor was also part of their extended family and was also in Military Intelligence. They also started the bank Robert Fleming which was the last independent privately owned bank in the UK.
Upon reflection, I came to the conclusion secrets are incompatible with democracy. As soon as we had secret agencies, our democracy was in peril. The JFK & RFK assassinations are really all the confirmation needed to prove that. But it just makes sense. How can the people decide if they don’t have all the facts?
Jason I had a similar experience. A friend with DSS who worked closely with them talked me out accepting a job. He told as a case officer I would be dealing with people who were willing to sell out their families, country, friends, etc. he said, “where do you think you stand?” I passed too. But as much as I see them recruiting and talking about the agency on here, the secrecy thing must be long gone
Jason Your grandfather was a wise man........in the past 4 years especially, I've done a crazy amount of reading on post-WW2 America. One conclusion: after 1947, the CIA was insane on many levels, populated by a lot of questionable characters, especially Allen Dulles ( who likely had his hand in JFK's assassination.....before he was put on the Warren Commission! ). 2 must-read books.......
I got stuck with the job as the Camera Guy mostly because I was related to Photographer Mathew Brady.
Brandon Reed
3w
Lolol... paper-pushing data jockeys with outdated data. Always a day late and a dollar short. The men in suits will never be able to deliver like the ones in uniform. IYKYK That's all I'm adding to this.
Acclaim Aerospace ⚙️ Swiss Lathe Ultra Precision Machining ✈️ Aviation 🚀 Space🗽Defense 🔫 Pew Pews 🚑 Medical 📲 Electronics 🤓 Chief Engineer & Machinerer 🏫 STEM Ed Advocate 🐝 GA Tech Yellow Jacket
3wMy Grandmother gave me a copy of Ian Fleming's "Casino Royale" (his first book of the James Bond series) and I was hooked not because of the protagonist story which of course is awesome but that Ian Fleming was a real intelligence man. In May 1939, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) recruited Fleming to be Godfrey’s personal assistant. Fleming’s code name was "17F". Working out of Room 39, also known as NID (Naval Intelligence Division), Ian Fleming sat at the helm of all British naval intelligence and was privy to all the secrets of the far-flung British naval empire. In 1942 Fleming formed a unit of commandos, known as No. 30 Commando or 30 Assault Unit (30AU), composed of specialist intelligence troops. 30AU was based on a German unit that would target and seize important documents from key enemy locations. Fleming now had his own secret army, which grew into more than 100 members. Alas, Fleming wanted to personally lead their missions... but his superiors said he was too valuable. And so he spent most of his time as a strategy man sitting at a desk and in meetings. He devised a number of wartime schemes worthy of a Bond novel. Some were successful and some were too wild to carry out.