Speaking of which, check out Brookings' very nice "survivor's guide" on surviving the executive branch appointment/confirmation process. Background on security investigations a bonus. -Declan On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 08:56:49PM -0500, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2000 anonymous@openpgp.net wrote:
US Citizenship is required, as is successful completion of a medical evaluation, polygraph interview and an extensive background investigation.
A "medical evaluation"??
http://www.odci.gov/cia/employment/jobpostings/architectstud.htm
Pretty standard procedure. A medical evaluation can detect drug users, alcohol users, people whose brain chemistry is different, etc. It can also detect people who are likely to be more or less expensive to insure, people who need drugs (from insulin to psychopharmaceuticals) to function normally, and people with more than a "reasonable" number of knife-fight scars, which might indicate that someone is too rash or hotheaded.
It also gets them DNA samples etc, which they can later use to positively identify you if you ever get implicated in anything criminal or controversial.
And finally, they will wind up knowing all about your tattoos and brands if any, which will point out people who were in certain gangs and societies during certain time periods.
That's just part of the job. If you're going to handle secret material for any government, that government will want to know everything about you no matter how invasive, and they will want to own every possible bit of leverage anyone can have on you, and they want to be damned sure that no one else has any leverage on you that they don't know about.
Medical examinations are just one aspect of that.
I bet they audit someone's taxes for the last six years before they hire them, too.
Bear