It was in the early ’80s, and I was working at the time in the Remote Sensing group for a major oil company’s Research Lab in Pittsburgh. It was my dream job, what I had spent my entire career working up to. I wrote image processing support software for petrochemicals exploration applications (LandSat, TM, SAR, HCMM and airborne IR spectrometer platforms). I loved the work and had excellent professional relationships with the PHD geochemists I worked for. I was writing FORTRAN code for an HP3000 minicomputer hosting our IDIMS (Interactive Digital Image Manipulation System). We had even just achieved a personal triumph by finding a major gold deposit in Nevada.

But all good things must come to an end. The Texas oilmen who ran the firm had shot themselves in the foot on some questionable stock market maneuvers, somehow converting a phenomenal cash reserve and a commanding leadership position in our industry into a major liability. There was a sense of disaster and foreboding in the air. T. Boone Pickens had flown into town and set up an office to assemble a hostile takeover bid. A hardass hatchet man with a rep for firing people and acquiring debt as a poison-pill defense had replaced our popular and successful Lab Director and there was talk of closing the entire outfit and moving those who survived the layoffs to the Home Office in Houston. I knew even then nothing good had ever come out of Texas, I decided to start looking for a way out.

I saw a classified in one of the trade rags indicating the CIA was hiring remote sensing weenies, so I sent in the dreaded green application form and my paperwork to Headquarters. Within a week I got a positive response by phone, followed by a packet of brochures and instructions and a plane ticket to DC. They put me up at a hotel right across from the Watergate building. Next day, I took a cab and went to the address in my instructions.

The CIA hiring office was right out of an espionage novel. A door at street level, marked only by the street address, opened to a long hallway that led directly to a closed door opening to a tastefully appointed anteroom manned by a pretty receptionist and an ugly rent-a-cop. There was nothing anywhere that indicated what went on there. After a short wait, I was escorted to the elevator and up to my first interview.

The man was a geographer, like myself, but he was not a techie. He looked over my paperwork and grunted approvingly, and gave me some passes that would get me into the National Photo Interpretation Center at the Washington Navy Yard. After some small talk and a few general questions on my background, the man got to the point.

“It says in your application here that you’ve experimented with marijuana and other illegal psychedelic drugs. This doesn’t mean much to us, if we had to send back everyone who smoked a joint or or dropped acid in college we would have no staff at all. But you do understand that in order to come work for us, you will have to sign a paper that indicates you have ceased these activities, and will not resume them while you are working for us. This is necessary for your security clearances. And you do realize that you will be subject to random drug testing and lie detector exams, and you will be denied clearances and possibly let go if they are unsatisfactory.”

I indicated I was aware of that, and I agreed to the terms. The man shook hands, wished me luck, and told me he was impressed by my credentials and would issue a positive report about me to his superiors. He also gave me some gifts, which he felt as a geographer, I would appreciate: copies of the official (unclassified) CIA Atlases of the People’s Republic of China, and the Polar Regions; brand new, still in their shrink wraps. I still have them somewhere around the house.

I was loaded up into an unmarked van along with several other guys in suits carrying briefcases, I was dropped off first, at NPIC. I recall the Navy Yard was in a pretty ugly part of town, and the facility was in a very forbidding gray concrete building. There was lots of security. I do recall some things about my visit there. They gave me the Grand Tour, they had the same IDIMS system I was familiar with at work. I also recall the Lab Director who interviewed me was a beautiful young woman, absolutely stunning. I was looking forward to working under her.

The next stop was at CIA Headquarters, in Langley, VA. I’m sure you’ve seen it in the Tom Clancy movies. I recall the big lobby with the CIA logo on the floor, and the wall with memorials to agents that had fallen in the line of duty. I don’t recall anything else there, though. I must have been interviewed, filled out forms, perhaps even taken some examinations. But I don’t remember anything else. Memory Wipe? I don’t know, but the only thing I can recall now was the small talk I made with another passenger in the van that took me back to DC.

It all ends with a whimper. A few weeks later I got a packet in the mail, and an offer of employment. They were offering me the same salary I was earning in Pittsburgh, which was very generous for Western Pennsylvania, but which I knew would be poverty level in Washington or the surrounding suburbs. I turned them down.

A few weeks later I accepted an offer from Electromagnetic Systems Laboratories in Sunnyvale, California; the outfit that had sold my oil company their IDIMS system. As for my old employer, a few months later the Research Lab was closed, the few staffers still there offered a transfer to Houston, or one of the field offices in Casper, Bakersfield, or Port Arthur. Eventually, the company was absorbed by Exxon Corporation

Its sad. That was the best job I ever had.