DON'T GET ME STARTED 71minister Menachem Begin, and the aforementioned John Hinckley. By that
time, the criminally insane Hinckley was confined in St. Elizabeth’s psychi-
atric hospital for his recent assassination attempt against President Reagan.
We never did hear back from the queen or Begin, but John Hinckley
mailed back our RSVP card with a very nice handwritten note stating that,
regrettably, he’d be unable to attend our wedding. He added that he had
other commitments—I never knew if this was an intentional pun or not—
but he wished us a happy life together.
It’s common knowledge that prison officials routinely monitor all
incoming and outgoing prisoner mail and phone calls. While Hinckley was
not in prison, he was criminally insane and was locked up for trying to kill
a US president. It’s safe to assume that his mail was being monitored, if
for no other reason than it would be good to know of any other psycho-
paths out there who may pose a risk to the president. It’s also reasonable
to assume that Hinckley’s known contacts would be entered into a gov-
ernment database, searchable by, say, CIA investigators who are trying to
determine whether or not an applicant should be entrusted with access to
explosives and our nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Alas, I was pleasantly surprised when no one from the CIA asked me
about the nature of my relationship with putative presidential assassin John
Hinckley. (For the record, I have not heard from Mr. Hinckley since he was
released from institutional psychiatric care in 2016.)
Satisfied with my clean background, the CIA offered me a job as a
career trainee (CT) in the Directorate of Operations, the foreign clandes-
tine service of the US government. The elite CT program was “spy basic
training,” and all CTs had to successfully survive and complete over one
year of rigorous training courses prior to becoming certified as an opera-
tions officer and deployed overseas.
CIA training would start after I graduated from law school, and I was
given my choice to enter on duty with either the June or the October class.
I was eager to put the law books behind me forever and join the CIA as
soon as possible, so I said I’d start in June. The CIA man who offered me
the job advised against acting so hastily. He recommended I pass the bar
exam before joining up. That way, in case things didn’t work out, I’d have
something to fall back on. Otherwise, he said, my only real job option with
nothing but CIA experience would be with the Mafia.