I was acquainted with someone who was definitely not a spy because he worked overseas as a uniformed military officer so he couldn’t be treated as a spy if captured. To my knowledge he was not spying because he was supposed to be an arms expert, I had no way of knowing what he was actually doing out of the country though, but it was clear he was working for US intelligence.
“common” should go in there. That’s what I get for posting from my phone.
Not me, but my dad knew a number of pilots in Air America, back when he was stationed at Udorn in the late 60s. Not sure if that counts.
I have a cousin-in-law who worked at NSA and was dramatically cryptic about his job. Turns out he was in their payroll/bookkeeping section - not following the money, just making sure employees were paid. Even in retirement, he’s a jerk.
My last job before retiring from DoD was associated with the Intel community and I occasionally met with CIA folks, but they were all analysts, boring and geeky. We had a guy who transferred into our organization from CIA and he was a bit of a whack job - he refused to be photographed, and he made a big deal about it. I’m pretty sure he lacked the subtlety to be a spy.
But we all know that the surest way of verifying someone’s a spy is if they say they work for a greeting card company. Right?
I worked for someone once who - as it came out at his retirement party - had worked at Bletchley in WW2. I had often got the impression that, whenever he asked some question about whatever issue was up for decision, there was always some hidden agenda I couldn’t get at and that there was more to just about anything he said than met the eye.
And when I was a student of German in the 60s, I spent three weeks touring East Germany. The morning I arrived in East Berlin (off an overnight train), I had just come out of registering with the police when some fellow got talking to me and invited me to lunch the next day. I smelt a rat, so I just went off doing touristy things elsewhere. Maybe he was up to something, either illegal currency deals or maybe he was from the Stasi, or maybe he was just curious about foreigners, but I never heard any more about it.
Maybe.
I know a few mathematicians who worked for the Communications Security Establishment (Canada’s NSA equivalent, sort of), none of whom would qualify as a “spy” per se.
The backbone of intelligence is information gathering, so the vast majority of CIA employees are involved somehow in that aspect of it. The work they do is the farthest thing from James Bond that you can imagine, but it is absolutely vital. A mere scrap of information can save a million lives. The people who somehow uncover information that exposes a plot to commit nuclear terrorism are, in their own anonymous and unexciting way, the greatest heroes we have.
No comment.
That’s spy talk for, “YES.” 
I knew a guy who claimed to be a spy, who claimed to get packages from the CIA delivered to him that he’d then use to conduct top-secret missions, who claimed to be the youngest person ever certified to fly a stealth fighter. He would argue you into the dirt if you ever doubted his claims out loud.
Yeah.
And then I knew another guy, a charming, funny gamer, who had some sort of job with the military that sometimes took him overseas. Once at a party someone made a joke about him being a CIA spook, and he laughed and changed the subject, and there was a weird vibe, and I was like, holy crap.
If anyone I’ve ever known was a spy, it was him.
Off-topic here, but this reminded me of when I was in OCS. Three of the guys there were Navy Seals making the change from enlisted to officer, and I was struck by how low-key they all were, considering what it takes to become a Seal. Some time later, I ran into a guy bragging about his days in the Seals and I knew by the big talk that he was full of crap. When you achieve something like that, you don’t need to brag about it - you know you’re good.
Not a spy per se, but my cousin was the head of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit. Had the most secure office at the Hoover building. Has interesting stories of being hustled out of Washington on 09/11 - the government SUVs at one point drove onto sidewalks. He has Og-only-knows how many secrets crammed in his head, about which he absolutely will not talk.
Later, he became the FBI’s General Counsel, until the Orange Shithead forced him out for being a protégé and friend of Jim Comey. (And slandered him on Twitter, to boot.) My cousin was accused of being the FBI leaker, which is utterly ridiculous, if you know how close-mouthed he is. Most intelligent person I’ve ever known.
Years ago, when I was standing in the Bangkok airport customs line, i noticed three or four people who stood out by their manner and dress. One of them detached from his line and casually wandered over to me. “We can share a cab” he said in a muffled tone - when I looked puzzled he asked “You are with the Company?”… I said, “Yeah I’m with National Semiconductor”. He looked disgusted and wandered off. Guess I looked like one of ‘them’.
There’s an old joke. It draws upon stereotypes which might be dated. If you or your loved ones are sensitive to salacious material, we advise you to stop reading. This trigger warning has been brought to you by PaprikaCo. The joke printed below does not reflect the opinions of PaprikaCo nor its subsidiaries.
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How can you tell if an Argentinian is a spy?
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He is wearing a T-shirt that says “I am the greatest spy in the world.”
I once had a neighbor who claimed she was a spy for Interpol.
Not directly, but an intriguing story:
About 15 years ago one of my coworkers bought a house in suburban Maryland at auction, just a few miles from Andrews AF Base. She bought it super cheap, and the whole place was a complete mess and falling apart; it had been sitting abandoned for years.
When she took possession of the property and went inside, she found piles of random electronics, and piles of books and papers all in Russian, all partially burned. Seemingly random items stuffed into walls. At least one of the rooms had been soundproofed. There was still a badly decomposed, half-eaten breakfast for 3 set up at the kitchen table, like the previous occupants had suddenly left in a hurry. She talked to the neighbors who all said they’d never spoken to the family that was living there, they’d only seen them infrequently, and one day they all just vanished, and left everything behind.
She collected up all of the junk and had a friend from the FBI look at it. Ultimately he told her it was nothing and just to trash it all, but you never really know…
How could you tell the French spies (in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc.) from the American spies?
- The Americans wouldn’t eat the street food.
In the 60s there was a Yank hanging out at the Bucharest hostel who seemed super-smooth. We suspected he was CIA, asked a lot of questions, didn’t answer many. . Once he said “Taking the train to Odessa, coming back on the boat, see you in about a week.” Nobody ever heard from him again. Maybe just a wanna-be.
Shortly before I moved from my old town, my neighbors said that I might get a knock on the door from some Federal officials because the husband, who was then about 60 years old and retired military, was applying for a job that would require significant background checks.
I moved before anything more happened.