A couple of years ago, I actually looked into a job as analyst for the FBI. The office was only a few blocks from where I was living, the pay was good for this area and it was a few months after 9/11, so I saw it as a way to help out.

The first thing the online process got into was drug use. Specifically the FBI doesn't want anyone for any position who has used marijuana over 15 times. In their life.

Now there are a few intelligent Boy Scouts out there but when you have something like that as a prime qualification, you are eliminating the great majority of intelligent, creative American applicants. By enforcing such a rule, the FBI (and presumably the CIA) is going to get employees who are either dull, follow- the-book types or else good liars (you have to beat a polygraph).

That the intelligence agencies are populated by people who can't see the forest for the trees surprises me not at all.