By SCOTT C. REYNOLDS [McSweeney’s] – Your entire life was carefully constructed with the sole purpose of not merely passing an intelligence agency background check but indeed making the checkers fall to their knees and thank God above that you, the perfect spy candidate, were a born and bred Midwesterner and not some useless foreigner. On paper you were the perfect candidate and you were sure that you’d land a job in the National Clandestine Service and be making dead drops, dangling moles, using active doubles (and passive doubles) and working some highly anticipated honeypot missions. It turned out that being too perfect on paper is a red flag. Your resume was good enough to get you far enough along in the process to fail the psychological evaluation. That was when you learned that you can want something too much.
It was a big setback, but as with everything else, you were prepared for it.
Continued at McSweeney’s | More Chronicle & Notices.
