@Neverdul
Thanks for showing the insignias of our various intelligence groups.
@Victoria33Thank you for sharing your significant other’s perspective of things. It is important and tell him that I thank him for his service (and yours too).
After my divorce I dated a man for about a year and a half who, when I first met him was a Commander in the USN and working at Ft. Meade (NSA). When we met during a golf outing, he asked me out and gave me his business card on which he wrote down his home phone number on the back. I don’t recall all the details but the department he was assigned to, managed was called something like “Information Warfare”.
I knew enough not to ask him about his work, not that he would have told me and not that I even wanted to know, but did one day say that “sometimes we wear the black hats and try to get into the bad guy’s systems and sometimes we wear the white hats and keep the bad guys out of ours”. I know that he had a background in cryptology and served on several ships during his career and had an advanced mathematics degree.
Shortly after we started dating he retired from active duty after putting in his 20, he went to work for a DOD contractor also at Ft. Meade and then at the Pentagon, basically according to him, working in the same areas of defense and intelligence.
He also told me that after 9-11 he and many others he worked with worked nearly 24-7 over the course of several weeks. That he basically slept on a cot in in his office.
After we had been going out for a while, after dinner and movie and a long romantic walk, he causally and sort of awkwardly asked me, “So just curious, where were you born, what was your maiden name, what was your mother’s maiden name?” I just smiled and said, “I know you have to tell the Men In Black who you are dating, so I’m am glad to tell you but wouldn’t it just be easier if I gave you my SSN so they can do the background check on me?” He blushed and said, “Well that would help.”
A lot of people do not understand what people working in intelligence and or with high level security clearances go through (along with their immediate families) as far as divulging things about their personal lives and relationships that most others would find too intrusive for their employer to ask.