He thanked his family, etc. and then said, "and after 40 years, I can finally tell you who I REALLY work for. I worked for the CIA. Thank you."

This is awesome. I have a few FBI agent friends and a few State friends, but I think they all work for who they say they work for. Although I guess I could be wrong.

One of the women who does freelance editing for us works for the FBI. I hope she's not a spy, because she's not exactly detail-oriented.

My sister applied for an FBI or CIA library job. She didn't get it, and I was really disappointed.

The first few months we were dating, all I could get out of Dan was that he did "computer security for the government," (Indie contractor for Dept. of Ag; not nearly as sexy.)

I REALLY REALLY wanted him to be Marshall from Alias, but it turns out he's not.

OR IS HE??!!?!!

So is Adrian. Who has...arms.

Arms with tattoos.

I know someone who joined the Secret Service.

One of my former student workers applied for one of those kind of jobs, and a man from the FBI came to question me about her. It ws sort of freaky, espeially since, technically, I think we aren't supposed to give references! And she was a really horrible student worker.

I think that there's a difference between a reference and a security clearance. I have done several of them. I guess it's business as usual, living in DC where so many jobs require a security clearance or background check.

What Vortex said -- I get one of those visits every year or so, and it's nothing to do with whether you're supposed to give references, or whether you'd give a good one in a situation where they could pick what references they list. Depending on the level/type of clearance, the office of personnel management has to check in on every job the person says they've had, even if it was a semester sitting in a student computer lab ignoring the users.

(Although, to be fair, most of mine have been for the good students. And it's still freaky. Not to mention hilarious when they ask about whether the student had any known contact with Foreign Nationals: dude, I manage a Language Lab. That describes, like, 3/4 of our faculty and half the students!)

DH and I were references for a friend of ours applying for a State Dept job. Mostly they just wanted to verify that he'd lived everywhere he said he had (and that he hadn't left anywhere out). It wasn't so much a "Will this person make a good employee?" as a "Did this person lie on their foreign service application?"