The Security Apparatus Hates Analysis

We all know that the security apparatus, having authoritarian personalities, hates analysis, especially of them. And yet people reasonably assess them all of the time, perhaps in large part because they have so many stereotypical traits. Stephen Kinzer in his excellent "Poisoner in Chief" on the types who were recruited for technical positions at the CIA -

Rather than recruiting from Ivy League universities, he concentrated on technical schools and state colleges.... "Typically, these technical recruits had shown a childhood penchant for tinkering that eventually turned into engineering and hard-science degrees," one Technical Services officer later wrote. "They were often the first or only member of their family to attend college and many came from rural communities in the Midwest and Southwest. They arrived at the CIA seeking technical opportunities and adventure. It did not take long before these newly engineers began delighting in calling operations officers 'liberal arts majors.'"

My father grew up in a small town in Utah, was the first of his family to go to college (somewhat against his father's wishes), said he studied physics because they said it was the hardest discipline (and considered engineering to be dull), and spent his entire college and graduate school career at a conservative religious institution before working undercover for the agency on the Glomar Explorer project. He also believed that history professors worked part-time in the summer as rangers at National Park sites.