If you ever want to know more about the secret world, come to Washington and buy a former spy a drink. Just one should do it.

They’ll start off coy, telling you about the 10 years they spent working for “the government”. The vagueness is a huge red flag, though, and rarely lasts beyond the first martini. Soon they’ll casually reference their time “at the agency”, and by the time you’re munching on the olives from drink number two, they’ll be reminiscing about their black-ops days living with a goat in a cave somewhere outside Kandahar.

Washington is a town of spies and spy-f***ers. It’s crawling with “agency” (CIA), NSA, DIA, NRO and countless other baffling acronyms. Plus the galaxy of “formers” — ex-analysts, special