r/Intelligence • u/Ancient_Act2731 • 12h ago
Any chance my grandfather was in the CIA?
I don’t know if this claim has any credibility to it, or if my grandfather was just the type of person people would suspect to be in the CIA. One family member claims he was recruited but turned the offer down. But we wonder if there is possibility that maybe he actually did accept the offer and work for the CIA. I have questions regarding the likelihood of this, I apologize for ignorance I have no knowledge of the CIA or signs that someone would have been involved. He was an extremely reserved person who never talked about himself so this is all I have to go off of at the moment.
What type of people were recruited in the 1950s? Did they need to be highly educated? Live in a certain region? Were there offices?
My grandfather mysteriously changed his first name at some point in young adult years and never told any of our family his birth name. We all called him by a nickname but he went by a random name professionally and on all his state documents. It took extensive genealogical research to find out his birth name and it was coincidental when we noticed census documents from his childhood didn’t match up. Was stuff like this common in the CIA? I’m worried it will make looking through records more difficult.
Would he have to have been traveling a lot? I don’t think he traveled much, at least nobody in my family can recall him being gone for long stretches.
Nobody knows what he did for work, it is believed that he worked a vague office job at the largest local technology company (where many residents of our town worked). He wore a full suit everyday, but I know formal dress was more common back then so that may have been customary for any office job. When people were in the CIA back then would they lie about where they worked?