Here’s a list of totally real things from my time “working for CIA,” which I’ll add to as I “remember” more things.
Disclaimer: Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, Living or Dead, is probably unintentional and classified.
- I was caught tilting all the pictures in the seventh floor hallway.
- I was (accurately) accused of stealing paperclips one at a time.
- I was ordered to stop using SF-706 labels to mark my lunch and anyone else’s ham sandwich.
- According to a performance review, I was once caught “attempting to spike the coffee with coffee.”
- I was once chastised for “having a staring contest with a security camera.”
- I was yelled at by the librarians when I started pulling on all the books to see if any opened a secret door.
- HR once sat me down and explained that there were “a lot of reasons” I couldn’t BASE jump off HQ.
- During the polygraph I was told to stop laughing about the operator being trained in a pseudo-science.
- Asked if I associated with unsavory characters, I said “no, they taste fine.”
- They said I wasn’t allowed to use the suggestion box anymore because I kept suggesting design changes for the box.
- I was told that food fights aren’t acceptable behavior at CIA, “not even on casual Friday.”
- I set off the sprinklers because I burned the bag at my desk.
- Security repeatedly confiscated my carrier pigeons.
- An operations manager once demanded that I “stop suggesting we sink Iranian ships with loose lips.”
- I was told that my “eChrips about Party in the CIA being
#careergoals” raised some concerns. - I was once described by DIRNSA as “who is this and why are they asking me questions?”
- I was ordered to stop putting subliminal messages in the Deputy Director’s voicemails.
- They laughed when I tried to combine secret Santa and paintball assassin. They stopped laughing at Xmas.
- They suspended my email access after I sent the office my fanfic about how CIA did kill JFK, but it was future CIA and we only did it to preserve the timeline.
- They said the writing was cliched, and
- They were confused by my comment in the email that “we need to get on this.”
- My supervisor wrote me up for starting a betting pool about deceased CIA Directors and who or what they reincarnated as.
- NSA wrote me a nasty note when I asked if they could tap HBO’s systems and intercept Game of Thrones before it aired.
- Security insisted I stop looking for things hidden in the walls and floors of CIA buildings.
- Security demanded to know how I snuck so many chisels in.
- I gave one of the cryptographers a headache when they tried to explain to me why a zero time pad wouldn’t work.
- I was told to never, ever respond to another request from the NSC by giving them finger guns.
- I was politely asked to stop referring to OSINT as the “dump stat of the IC.”
- I was told that “numbers stations + synesthesia” was “not a proper project proposal.”
- David Robarge asked me to stop telling people Angleton was my grandfather.
- I made the COO apoplectic when I insisted we add Acoustic Kitty to the Memorial Wall.
- My Intellipedia page for the Cola Wars was repeatedly removed and eventually edit locked.
- I was questioned for several hours about my reasons for posting “lost hermit crabs” signs in HQ.
- It was actually to distract from the fact that I was hiding them in my desk drawer.
- The ban on LARPing on Agency property was created because of me.
- I was informed that there was no such thing as Project GAY AGENDA and under no circumstances could I get DS&T to resume work on the gay bomb.
- I was formally reprimanded for passing out flyers alerting employees to “Bring Your Pet to Work Day,” when in fact no such day existed.
- I was told that “there’s no such thing as a funny NOC NOC joke,” and to stop trying.
- I was asked by an ITCSO to stop checking to see if CIA’s system had become self-aware.
- It was gently requested that I stop referring to NSA as the Non-Sense Agency.
- When I told DARPA I wanted to do beta-testing for them, they asked how I got their number.
- When I told IARPA I wanted to do beta-testing for them, they laughed, said I was still being beta-tested, laughed some more, and then hung up.
- I was told that it’s “disrespectful” to make up ghost stories about former CIA Directors.
- Even if they’re still alive.
- Especially if they’re the current Director.
- Security confiscated the blanket fort I built, then sent out a memo banning them.
- I was told it’s unethical to disguise mind control experiments as games, and against policy to test them out on coworkers.
- I was the reason they made a formal rule against using CIA letterhead for personal business, like asking neighbors to keep the noise down.
- I was temporarily banned from the seventh floor after I glued the Director’s coffee cup to the desk.
- Robarge ignored my petition requesting the Agency do its own Drunk History.
- “Getting drunk and talking about the Agency is the opposite of what we want people to do.”
- They reviewed my security clearance after I volunteered to be a test subject for the Agency’s drug programs.
- The first time I met the Director I was so nervous I forgot how to shake hands and I just put my fist against his palm.
- DARPA and I came to an agreement wherein I wouldn’t ask them about uploading my brain into a computer more than once a month.
- My request for approval to make a “Fun with FISA” podcast was denied.
- On our visit to the J. Edgar Hoover building, I was informed that taking people’s lunches and holding them hostage “doesn’t count as a training simulation for the negotiators.”
- I was firmly instructed to never ask the surveillance UAV operators “who has the high score?” again.
- I found out that no one else wanted to call it the PICL again, not “even if it’s fun to say.”
- On April 1st, I left coworkers notes that said “April Fools!” but didn’t actually play a prank on them because I wanted to see how they’d react.
- Not well, it turns out.
- I did an art project where I collected my coworkers’ trash, lifted their fingerprints, and compiled them in a scrapbook.
- The Inspector General called it “a threat to national security” and
- “The weirdest thing since Warhol.”
- I was caught trying to “incept” coworkers who drifted off in the library.
- I was asked to stop offering to tell coworkers how sex toys can be used to counter certain forms of technical surveillance.
- People asked me to stop making jokes about being “burned by the Agency” every time the coffee was too hot.
- HR sent me an email saying that regardless of the acoustics, the elevator wasn’t an appropriate karaoke rehearsal space.
- The rest of the office once staged an intervention and begged me to “never go full Angleton” again.
- I was visibly disappointed when I met the head of MI-5 and it was neither Dame Judi Dench nor Maxwell Knight.
- I failed SERE the first time because I tried to convince my captors that they had Stockholm syndrome.
- I was firmly informed that Bring Your Tesla Coil to Work Day doesn’t exist.
- I got into an argument with HR over whether a Faraday Body Bag violated the dress code.
- The Office of Personnel sent me written instructions to stop telling new employees that the property’s clever landscaping concealed an operational Minuteman-III silo.
- I learned that the line between “hanging memes on the wall” and “graffiti” isn’t as thin as I thought.
- I was made to promise to stop asking the codebreakers to decipher pictures of crop circles.
- I hung “Authorized Personnel Only” signs on all the restroom doors.
- I came in the next morning to discover my coworkers had responded by labeling my computer EYES ONLY and disabling my speakers “for security.”
- I was told that it’s inconsiderate to mine Intelink for material for my standup routine.
- I stole the Director’s Keurig machine.
- They told me that at a certain point, sending FOIA submissions through the web portal crossed the line into “cyber bullying.”
- I discovered that betting pools about who’s a mole are bad for morale and unit cohesion.
- The NSC declared me the designated survivor, but I think they were just avoiding me because that’s not how it works.
- I absentmindedly responded to a reference to the nuclear football by telling my supervisor I don’t follow sports.
- I taped a nyan cat to a different bathroom mirror everyday.
- I was told I can’t just walk into a security meeting because of Pokémon Go.
- Unless there was an abra in there.
- I didn’t realize until three and a half weeks in that it wasn’t the Culinary Institute of America.
- I was ordered to stop basing Dungeons & Dragons adventures on Agency missions.
- I was asked to stop drawing cat whiskers on the Directors Gallery portraits.
- I replaced everyone’s outgoing voicemail messages with a live stream from a numbers station.
- I tried to get out of paying my taxes by labeling my tax return SECRET.
- The Agency made me go to a seminar on the dangers of over-classification.
- I was the only employee to ever attend.
- I started a petition for CIA to develop its own local access channel on closed circuit.
- HR tried (and failed) to explain to me why I shouldn’t turn my coworkers into memes.
- On no less than three occasions, I asked DS&T to “invent magic.”
- I accidentally blew Embassy Cat’s status as our undercover asset, leading to their evacuation from the embassy.
- I was met with repeated confusion when I tried to get people to make Chuck Norris-style jokes about the CI Chief.
- I was caught practicing the Director’s signature so I panicked and said I want them to sign my autograph book but I was scared to ask and didn’t want anyone to know I was afraid so I was going to fake it.
- They asked me to sign something saying I wouldn’t practice closeup magic on anyone from the Office of Security anymore.
- I spread a rumor that there was a cat living in the building’s structure.
- I exfiltrated 983 pudding cups from CIA facilities and into my apartment before they made me stop.
- I once came to work wearing a Santa hat and asked if we had a list of naughty and nice surveillance subjects.
- “It’s March, Emma. What are you doing?”
- My username was 25X1.
- I was reported to my superiors for protesting the Agency’s on-campus recruitment.
- I was ordered to stop making Secret Squirrel jokes.
- I hung signs on the restroom doors that said “Elevator closed for renovation. Please use the stairs.”
- I snuck an insect into Headquarters just so I could say I bugged CIA.
- I requested, and was denied, authorization to challenge Vladimir Putin to a game of Scrabble, “winner take all.”
- I challenged the CI Chief to a drinking contest. The next morning was the only time I’ve ever been hungover. They looked younger than ever.
- I made a newsletter with horoscopes based off people’s clearance levels.
- I was responsible for 23 of the 66 instances of “Kilroy was here” during my time at CIA.
- I was screamed at by an Israeli intel chief when I tried to get written acknowledgment that they’d had me detained.
- I confessed to historical crimes when they re-polygraphed me.
- I am Spartacus!
- I was given written notice that “challenge accepted” is not an acceptable response to “you can’t.”
- I helped test a new version of the Agency’s Turing Test. I failed.
- I was ordered to stop asking the cafeteria to “put the rich on the menu.”
- Someone who had been in the room when I asked the DCIA questions said I sounded like an investigative journalist; it was not a compliment.
- I had a two-star general give me some sort of secret handshake, seemingly at random.
- I was made to write “I will stop making jokes about STARGATE” over and over again on a white board.
- My supervisor chose to ignore my crank calls to journalists.
- I ran a monthly office betting pool about who could get the silliest cryptonym into use.
- I was questioned by security for asking too many questions about 3D printing masks.
- I was told not to “pre-redact” paperwork before I submitted it.
- I was voted “Most Dangerous Gardener” two years in a row.
- I was accused of “trying to trick employees into doing charity work.”
- I lost a prank war with the CI Chief.
- I got “waterboarding” and “boogie boarding” confused. Twice.
- I initiated a conspiracy to erase certain readers’ ability to detect satire.
- I was reprimanded for describing catching Pokemon as recruiting assets.
- I turned the frogs gay, but not intentionally.
- It was a happy accident.
- I tried to convince some of my coworkers to start a cult, but they just got really into LARPing.
- When I was given my first field assignment, I argued I shouldn’t have to leave my desk because “it’s Central INtelligence, not Central OUTelligence.”