“The polygraph examination was conducted in a small locked room.”
It may sound like Hemingway, if he had applied to work for a U.S. intelligence agency. But it actually comes from an unusual first person account of the process of applying for employment at the National Security Agency—from the initial interview to the psychological exam to the background investigation and the polygraph test.
The author, writing under the pseudonym Ralph J. Perro, provides a detailed, chatty and somewhat irreverent narrative of the stages of evaluation of incoming NSA employees. In his case, the three and a half month clearance process led to his rejection on unspecified security grounds.
The next best thing to Body of Secrets (which I still have yet to finish), Perro’s Interviewing With The NSA provides very interesting and equally entertaining insight into the TOP SECRET process of joining one of America’s most secretive intelligence agencies — and it’s here at Boihazard!