Answering Questions About Your Employment
(From the NSA Handbook)
Certainly, you may tell your family and friends that you are employed at or
assigned to the National Security Agency. There is no valid reason to deny them
this information. However, you may not disclose to them any information
concerning specific aspects of the Agency's mission, activities, and
organization. You should also ask them not to publicize your association with
NSA.
Should strangers or casual acquaintances question you about your place of
employment, an appropriate reply would be that you work for the Department of
Defense. If questioned further as to where you are employed within the
Department of Defense, you may reply, "NSA." When you inform someone that you
work for NSA (or the Department of Defense) you may expect that the next
question will be, "What do you do?" It is a good idea to anticipate this
question and to formulate an appropriate answer. Do not act mysteriously about
your employment, as that would only succeed in drawing more attention to
yourself.
If you are employed as a secretary, engineer, computer scientist, or in a
clerical, administrative, technical, or other capacity identifiable by a general
title which in no way indicates how your talents are being applied to the
mission of the Agency, it is suggested that you state this general title. If
you are employed as a linguist, you may say that you are a linguist, if
necessary. However, you should not indicate the specific language(s) with which
you are involved.
The use of service specialty titles which tend to suggest or reveal the nature of
the Agency's mission or specific aspects of their work. These professional
titles, such as cryptanalyst, signals collection officer, and intelligence
research analyst, if given verbatim to an outsider, would likely generate
further questions which may touch upon the classified aspects of your work.
Therefore, in conversation with outsiders, it is suggested that such job titles
be generalized. For example, you might indicate that you are a "research
analyst." You may not, however, discuss the specific nature of your analytic
work.