Blowing My Cover
by By Moran, Lindsay
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Women

Call me naive, but when I was a girl - watching James Bond movies and devouring Harriet the Spy - all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations when I became an adult. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA. My dad - who I secretly suspected was a spy himself - told me I wasn't their type. That only made me more determined.Getting into the CIA was a story in itself. I peed in more cups than you could imagine, and was nearly condemned as a sexual deviant by the staff psychologist. I passed a lie-detector test in which a previous applicant allegedly admitted that he'd dismembered his wife and buried her in the basement. Meanwhile, my roommates were getting freaked out by government background investigators lurking around, asking questions about my past.Finally I made it: I was in training to be a CIA case officer. A spy. They taught me to crash cars into barriers at sixty miles per hour. Jump out of airplanes with cargo attached to my body. Survive interrogation, travel in alias, lose a tail.One thing they didn't teach us was how to date a guy while lying to him about what you do for a living, where you live, and your entire identity. That I had to figure out for myself.But I passed it all (except the dating part) with flying colors, much to my father's amazement. Then I was posted overseas. And that's when the real fun began...and when I began to truly understand that being a spy was nothing at all like I'd expected.