Hacker News Reader

Comment by fires10 | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking it might be that most people claiming to be a former spy were just posing and not really a former spy. I know the few I dealt with that had the legitimate potential to actually being one were all very low key and wouldn't normally talk about it any way. I would probably lose faith in someone claiming to be a spy simply because of this. Not the dishonesty in being one, but that most who claim to be are probably not.

View on HN

I expect there’s a fair few intelligence analysts knocking about who don’t need to be that secretive (“I just read material from multiple sources and produced reports”) - unlike intelligence officers (people who covertly recruit and run agents) who really do need to show the utmost discretion to protect other people, methods and locations.

People like to ask what I did in the military if it comes up. It took me a few years to come up with something that didn’t cause this reaction.

I always start out with I was a nobody and didn't do anything exciting or interesting which is the truth. It just sounds more exciting than it really was. I answered the phone and said "so and so is not available, can I take a message" on unsecured lines. I got the job because I was the only one in the temp unit awaiting orders who wasn't there for disciplinary reasons. The "so and so" was a political appointee.

Sounds like a vacation! I was a nobody too, but I did get to see some wild shit because I have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; got me demoted a couple of times too. I also had a habit of tinkering with things I had no business tinkering with, to my commander’s chagrin, and sometimes, but rarely, delight. Sometimes I miss it for a few minutes, but I really don’t.

That’s pretty much the gist of what I say these days. There’s usually questions about the wild shit or the tinkering, but that’s pretty much where it ends, because there’s no way those stories are true. My wife didn’t believe most of them until she met some of the people I worked with and she realized that the stories I told were the sane ones: they have even crazier ones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com