Interviewing with the NSA

George Maschke writes "'Interviewing With an Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny thing Happened on the Way to Fort Meade)' is a humorous and entertaining account of one man's recent experience seeking employment with the National Security Agency (NSA). But this story, newly posted to the Federation of American Scientists website, is also one with a serious message. Written under the pseudonym 'Ralph J. Perro,' it includes discussion of the job interview, psychological testing, polygraph, and background investigation. It will be of interest to anyone contemplating employment with a federal intelligence agency."

Comments

Re:Working for the government is easy..

[Shadowin]

Ahh, I get it now. So that's why people employed in [insert government agency here] don't care about our Constitutional rights!

"Ralph J. Perro" is a complete puss

[HarveyBirdman]

His wife deserves the Nobel Prize for staying married to someone who quotes Hunter S. Thompson.

Gosh. *THE* top intelligence agency in the world is careful about who they hire. Thanks for the newsflash "Ralph".

I went through the same thing for my job, and it was pretty easy and straightforward. Polygraphs are actually very simple conceptually in what they are trying to detect. Sometimes there are faults, but that's why they retake them.

My neighbors thought it was sort of cool that my job required such scrutiny. I messed with one guys head, when he asked me what I did, I looked carefully into the sky for several moments before saying "Oh, can't talk about it now" and then glancing up in the sky again. :-)

But the Federation of American Scientists is a heavily ideological outfit, so what can you expect?