<p>I have known four people who worked for the CIA at some point. One was a Yale economics PhD who specialized in Chinese trade issues. One was a Penn PhD student in Central Asian history. The third was an Operations Research PhD student at Berkeley. The fourth was a lawyer. I also knew someone who worked for the OSS – he had been a graduate student in linguistics, and when World War II was about to break out he was one of only a handful of literate American citizens who knew any Micronesian languages, which all of a sudden were looking mighty strategically important. I imagine a few years ago knowing Pashto or Turkmen was a hot ticket, or one of the dialects of Arabic they don’t teach in school.</p>
<p>I would bet anything they have a web page that talks about how to get hired.</p>
<p>The days when people recruited each other out of Skull & Bones or Porcellian are long gone, and I doubt that ever happened at Chicago anyway (too many Not Our Sort of People).</p>