There are idiots everywhere in the town. I worked in Federal law enforcement for many years and some of my colleagues wouldn't even tell their spouses what they did (even though their was absolutely no prohibition from telling anyone). These guys live in their own little fantasy worlds. Many are now retired and when I run into some of them they won't tell me what they are doing post-retirement (that too is apparently a big secret).

Anonymous wrote:It means he works for the IRS.

Not necessarily. My spouse works for the IRS and many of them say they work for the US Treasury (which is accurate since IRS is part of the US Treasury).

Most that I know that say the subject line work for one of the Intelligence agencies (we live near NSA and many of them say that).

FYI, not all intel agency employees/contractors are undercover. I used to work at CIA and was not a covert employee. I could openly say I work for CIA (although it is not advised). If he was indeed a covert employee, he would have a cover story. My guess is that he is a mere contractor at a basic, non-intel agency and just wants to make himself sound important.

Here's my answer. "Eh, I'm just a government drone. And what do you do? " Most of the time they understand the code and change the conversation.

People love to talk about themselves, anyway.

My oldest daughter does not work for a secret program in Washington DC, but she does have a security clearance of a certain level to cover the area that she researches and writes about. She also has given presentations for a range of workers in other government agencies. What is comical is that she is very outgoing and has said more than once that she would be in such a briefing setting and just go up and say 'Hi I am Larla and work for XX and be friendly, and the person would just about jump out of their skin and mumble a name and nothing more...." She has said it would drive her nuts to have to have a job like that. I think what would be hard is if one could not talk as mentioned about generalities of the office or other kind of situation of a job one was doing. Also, if one would not be able to socialize with folks they might meet and enjoy doing things with outside of a work setting it could be very limiting. I think it would be important for a couple to really know each other well, have some similar interests that would help them grow and enjoy doing/spending time together as well as developing a set of friends beyond the job world.