The minimum 9 month process to enter the CIA at the time began with sending a resume in response to a newspaper ad, perhaps in the WSJ or NY Times.
If your resume survived the screening where thousands were eliminated, next came a face to face interview in a business hotel chain room in a city near you, where the interviewer gave you his name, but told you up front it was an alias.
Then they send you a huge pile of paper work and also a 15 book reading list of the most detailed books about the CIA both pro and con including the books by defecting agents, America haters and CIA haters.
I was impressed by that. I think they wanted the recruit to hear as many horrible accusations against the USA and the CIA as possible up front before you were accepted for training to make it less likely you would be swayed by the “opposition” at a later date.
I read all of the books and I base my contention that Obama was never in the CIA on that knowledge as well as the screening for any Marxist associates backed by lie detector testing as well as drug screening. History of use of any drugs was cause for elimination in the early 1980's when Obama would have been recruited. By the mid 1980's when I went through the process they changed the drug use exclusion to any one who had used within three years and they couldn't fill quotas!
A large portion of the paperwork was the standard set needed for a security clearance to be conducted. I went through two and although rejected by the CIA at the last minute when the earliest training slot was after I turned age 35, I was granted a “Secret” (lowest level) clearance related to international trade.
The security clearance paperwork requires you to list every single place you have ever resided and every place you have worked, and all of your relatives and friends with foreign connections or communist or other seditious sympathies so they can send agents to interview them. I still have it in my file. This interviewing and double-checking your statements takes six months or so.
They also ask you to write a lengthy paper on an international affairs topic of your own choosing. I wrote about the Iran-Iraq War and opined that the religiously inspired Iranians were ultimately more dangerous than the secular Iraqis.
They also schedule you for an all-day test on your knowledge of foreign affairs and political science at a local university where several hundred people show up instructed not to say much to each other. You take the test, then leave.
I had completed all of these challenges, apparently successfully as they are given in sequence and you don't get from one to the next unless you pass, except for the security clearance.
I have a relative who might have had an FBI file that might have been of concern to them.
Thank carp, I'm not trying to make an argument with you, however, what you experienced above is not more than I faced when I applied for the privilege of immigrating to the United States of America as a "normal" foreign citizen during the period of three and half years before entry visa was granted. And just remember I was not coming from high volume country either!
My paperwork, which I always take copies of contains 4 x 2" thick Office Depot hanging files in my filing cabinet under the title "Immigration papers". I didn't use an immigration attorney, but did all the paperwork manual by myself with the help of an old Underwood typewriter.!!
I gave you a link to a radio broadcast of the mentioned trial, it's about three hours and I just finished listening to it, which I can see you have not done. You may be surprise to learn how our Government is "really" operating which is swept under the rug by the State-run-Media. Have a nice Sunday, all!!!
The hotel room with legal reps is an odd feeling for sure.