I worked for the NSA for years. Here's what happened to my life after Donald Trump and DOGE showed up last year.

 For most of my late 20s and early 30s, once I had gotten out of the Marine Corps, I wasn’t exactly economically productive. During those years, I got a B.A. in English, of all the nonproductive majors I could have chosen, then doubled down by getting an M.A. in the same subject. I worked low-paying retail jobs to pay my rent while in school, and I also took on loans.

After getting my master’s, I changed my mind about going on for a Ph.D., because I decided I wanted to do something useful with my life, and applying deconstructionism, semiotics, and questionable versions of psychology and sociology to literary texts seemed to me as far from utility as one could get. I didn’t have a lot of hope I’d be able to find a good job with my degrees in literature, but, nonetheless, I put my resume out into the world.

For reasons I’m still not sure about, I included one line about knowing Korean, because when I was in the Marine Corps, I’d gone to the Defense Language Institute and allegedly learned it. My grasp on the language had never been that strong, and I hadn’t used it in six years since I’d been discharged, so I don’t know why I even included it. But I’m glad I did, because that one mention of Korean got me an email from the National Security Agency, which was undergoing a flurry of hiring activity in the wake of 9/11.

I didn’t have many better options, so I studied like crazy, flew to Maryland, took the language test and passed. That qualified me to undergo the other screening tests, including a polygraph. I’m not sure whether it was more surprising that I passed the Korean test or that I got through the security vetting, but in any event, seven months later, at 31 years old, I had my first real job. The NSA had thrown me a lifeline and made me suddenly productive.

I was so grateful to be employed in something that didn’t pay by the hour and that left me at least a few dollars before the next paycheck came. I was as nearly content as an employee can be. I realized the taxpayers were providing me a lot, and I worked hard to give them as much return on their dollar as I could. When I learned three months after taking the job that my wife and I were expecting a child, I was even more grateful and worked even harder.

What surprised me, though, was that after learning the nuts and bolts of the business for a few years, I ended up being actually kind of good at it. As useless as I thought it was, my background in literature had helped me build exactly the kinds of skills a good eavesdropping analyst needs: the ability to absorb and comprehend complex texts, to put the new information in context with other knowledge and to communicate the findings in clear prose. (OK, clear prose wasn’t exactly taught in the academy of the early 2000s, but I picked it up decently on my own.) 

When I came back, I was determined to do my best in the time I had remaining to change the culture for the better and to leave the state of North Korean analysis in a strong place. For a few years, that’s what I did. Then the 2024 election happened.

The fork in the what, now?

When the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficient sent its “fork in the road” email on Jan. 28, 2025, I didn’t get it. Like a lot of NSA employees, I didn’t have a “low side” (unclassified network) email. I first heard about the email and its offer of a deferred resignation from my brother, who’d seen it in the news and asked if I’d be able to use it. Since the initial reports seemed to suggest that defense employees would be exempt, I assumed it didn’t apply to me. (NSA is part of the Department of Defense, or what is now the Department of [ick] War.) In the following weeks, it began to seem as though we might be included in the offer after all. NSA’s leadership, to their credit, worked very hard to try to get us good information in a chaotic environment, but it still took time to get answers, and ultimately, I had only a few days to decide whether to take the offer of deferred resignation along with early retirement — four and a half years short of full retirement — and leave the only job I had ever been good at. That’s exactly what I chose to do.

There was no one singular reason why I left, but among them were the following:

Threats by President Donald Trump early in his term against Greenland and Canada made me hesitant to stay in the Department of Defense. I didn’t want to be tied to such an obviously immoral and senseless military adventure if it happened. 

The firings of trans military members. The fact that this happened wasn’t a surprise, but the way it happened seemed to me beyond the pale. Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth veered wildly out of their way to intentionally run over the honor of trans military members, suggesting their attempts to become more psychologically, emotionally or physically whole conflicted with a military member’s “commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Treating trans people in this way felt to me like a very dangerous elevation in rhetoric and political scapegoating. It also told me that Trump’s second term would be far more dangerous than his first. 

My mother was having serious medical issues, and my parents are both getting older, so taking early retirement to move back home to Ohio seemed a good way to be with them.

Politics: Social Security Whistleblower Quits, Cites 'Potentially Unlawful' Data Practices

The sneering contempt DOGE showed for federal workers, characterizing us as lazy and assuming we’d be more productive in the private sector, made me feel like I had no need to be where I wasn’t wanted. 

I wondered if, in the event I stayed, I’d get fired anyway for some comment I’d made or would make. 

Ultimately, I took early retirement, but I turned down the free seven months of paid administrative leave. This was undoubtedly unwise, and it probably cost me more than $80,000, but because DOGE was crowing about how lazy government employees would be happy to take money for nothing, I didn’t want it. Nor did I want to technically still belong to the government in case they later changed their minds and wanted to call us all back off administrative leave. If I really thought the Trump administration was that bad, then I felt I had a duty to cut ties, even the loose ones I’d have during those seven months.