…Not that my appearance went unnoticed. During one particularly large delegation visit dinner, the Chief of a very large and prominent division spent the entire evening talking with me and not even acknowledging our foreign guests. He shamelessly insisted I sit next to him, ordered my dinner for me, offered to share his dessert with me and made sure he poured my wine himself when my glass became empty. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were on a date. Fortunately our foreign guests were not offended and actually found his behavior rather amusing. I cannot say that the Agency participants were amused though, as I noticed the horrified looks on many of their faces during this high level SIS’s antics…

…During my own polygraph examination the polygraphers had insisted that I showed a reaction to the question of involvement in terrorism. I was questioned for hours about the possibility that perhaps I had given money to a terrorist group or attended a KKK rally with my grandfather at some point in my life. These strange and quite inappropriate suggestions had soured me on the polygraph. Sometimes, making a determination on whether or not the person was suitable for a security clearance required interviewing the individual about questionable information in their files. Whether it was a previous bankruptcy or a disturbing sexual proclivity, I quickly learned that I did not enjoy delving into people’s most personal information in order to determine if they posed a risk to national security. The reading was definitely interesting sometimes. We all had our share of cases where the applicant had masturbated in an inappropriate venue, such as a shared office at work, or had sex with their pets. Some of these people would go on to receive a clearance, and possibly would be working right alongside us in our next assignments…

…As with all offices in the Agency, we of course had to have cake for as many occasions as possible. It did not matter if you were working on time-sensitive intelligence that could save lives, you had to stop and gather around a giant cake at some point at least once a month. Heaven help the individual who did not have a sweet tooth (like me) or was diabetic and refused the cake – your refusal would be so offensive to the women of the office and you would risk ostracization. I was not a fan of the cake, so I experienced many a forced-cake-eating episode during my time in this office..

…Denise did not want to let it go though, and she would drill me almost daily about it. I finally blurted out that I had a disease that would not allow me to donate blood or bone marrow. I thought this would end the interrogation. Wishful thinking – Denise just wanted to know what disease I had. Did I mention I was surrounded by insanity?
I knew I had to get out of there. Besides the mind-numbing work, being surrounded by so many batty, crazed women was wearing me down….