“The Agency requires TOTAL honesty”
And only a naïve person gives it to them.
They use polygraphs or the equivalent when interviewing you for work, so actually it might be pretty naive to think you could get away with being untruthful to them.
I would be very surprised if he wasn’t wired to “the box” during the discussion. The Agency has been doing this for a very long time and it is not as easy as one may think.