Summary

After graduating from university, the author considered various career paths, including banking, intelligence work with the military, and the CIA, but ultimately did not pursue these options due to negative experiences, disorganization, and security concerns.

Abstract

The author, after completing university, was uncertain about his future career path but was drawn to opportunities in the Middle East. He explored jobs in banking and intelligence work within the military, as well as the CIA. The author found the banking environment unpleasant, particularly witnessing an executive's mistreatment of his secretary. His interactions with the military branches were mixed: the Air Force was uninteresting to him, the Army was disorganized, and the Navy was a strong contender with an offer that included language training and naval service, though the lack of guaranteed placement in Monterrey and the requirement for a lie detector test were deterrents. The Marine Corps presented an adventurous but impractical option, especially after a humorous encounter with a recruiter who emphasized machismo and survival skills. The author also reflected on a friend's experience with MI6 and his own brief consideration by the CIA, which was cut short due to his association with Oxford University, perceived as a security risk.

Opinions

The author was unimpressed with the banking sector, particularly the unprofessional behavior of an executive.
The Air Force's focus on photo analysis was deemed too narrow and uninteresting.
The Army's disorganization at the time was a significant turn-off.
The Navy offered a promising

Trying to Join the Military

Not all that you can be

When I finished University, I didn’t know what to do with myself except that I wanted to go to the Middle East, so I explored a number of potential options. I had a number of interviews with various institutions with mixed results. I found the atmosphere at a couple of the major banks at which I interviewed painful. At one in particular an executive I was meeting started abusing his secretary about something, so he didn’t make a very good impression on me.

One of my classmates, another American, David Rundell and I went and talked to the various service branches about joining up and working in Intelligence. This was an interesting experience. The Air Force was a waste of time. They just wanted people to analyze photographs of Russian airfields and planes and the like.

The Army, which I hope was only typical of that particular time in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, was so disorganized that they couldn’t even manage to get an interview arranged.

I almost joined the Navy. The proposed deal was a three-year stint which would have consisted of Officer Training School, a year at the school of languages in Monterrey California learning Arabic and then 18 months on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean monitoring local military radio traffic.

I should have done it. Three years in the Navy would have done me no harm. I would have passed out as a Lieutenant, junior grade which would have made me look solid as opposed to the dope smoking and LSD popping hippie I had been between the ages of 15 and 18.

Plus, they had a program whereby the government would match any money you saved out of your salary if it was used for further education. I could have financed an MBA afterwards. The problem was that the recruiters would not guarantee the Monterrey part of the deal, so there was always a risk you’d end up in Alaska or somewhere else.

To make matters worse the Commander or whatever he was who interviewed us said that we’d have to take a lie detector test as part of our security clearance procedures. He then made a little speech about how in this day and age they didn’t expect that young people such as we were would never have experimented with marijuana but that habitual use was not acceptable.

That put the wind up me! Would skipping a period or two of High School every day for a year to smoke dope on the hill behind the school qualify as habitual use? What about taking LSD about twenty times? Maybe I could claim that it helped me get in touch with the rhythms of the ocean and that was really like cosmic, man.

Our meeting with the Marine Corp was hilarious. An old-school Colonel made a big speech to us about how the Marines were a family and that was the most important element of being in the Corp. He then told us, “You don’t want to go into Intelligence. Hell, boy, what you want to do is Force Reconnaissance. That’s where we’ll parachute you behind enemy lines and teach you how to survive with nothin’ more than a piece of string and a pocketknife.”

David and I were nonplussed at this assertion. I didn’t know if I could channel so much adventurous machismo.

We then went to the officers’ club and got drunk with him and one of the other officers. He told us a hilarious story of how he had signed up for the Corps.

He had been 18 years old and had gone to the movies with a friend. It was The Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne. A recruiter had set up his booth outside the movie theater and grabbed them when they came out. They were so fired up by the film, they signed up on the spot.

Ok. Maybe to be a good Marine you need to have a minimum of impulse control. That would help when you are trying to take a hill using one of the three tactical methods for which the Marines are famous, which are frontal assault, frontal assault and frontal assault.

He gave us a glossy brochure and we went on our way.

A bit later David got his hands on a brochure for the Royal Marines, and we compared it to that of the US Marine Corps. Most of it was similar with pictures of men with guns in camouflage, faces blackened in rubber rafts, men deploying out of helicopters and that sort of thing. But when we got to the section on recreation we cracked up.

In the US Marine brochure, it had a picture of a few guys sitting in a sort of veneer-paneled rec room having a beer in front of a pool table. In the Royal Marine brochure, it featured two fellows in tuxedos with their very attractive dates sitting on a terrace overlooking the Rock of Gibraltar. The contrast couldn’t have been more striking. One had to ask why the British Marines hadn’t also included a picture of the regimental silver?

A buddy of ours, Charles had a ridiculous interview with people from MI6 who showed up at a hotel, told him they couldn’t tell him what the job was or what he would be doing or where but that they were interested in hiring him. When the interview was over, they left at the same time.

I didn’t even that get that far with the CIA. They said the mere fact that I had attended Oxford University meant that I was a security risk. I was pissed and said, “That shows what you know as all those guys (i.e. Burgess, Meredith, Maclean, Blunt, Cairncross and Kim Philby) went to Cambridge.”