Anecdotes

"Pennyloafers" means CIA?

This story was told to me by a person who was trained at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The CIA also trains personnel there, and a rivalry often develops between trainees from the various agencies. The story goes that it is possible to distinguish between the two by the kind of shoes they wear: CIA trainees wear penny loafers, FBI trainees wear wingtips. This is probably apocryphal, and even if it's not, very problematic when applied to women. And what do the NSA trainees wear? Flip-flops? But it's good slang nonetheless.

Roast Beef

This story comes out of the New York field office, as, according to Ronald Kessler, do all the best FBI anecdotes. Apparently, in New York, there was a deli situated conveniently near both the field office and a local police precinct, and lots of law enforcement people frequented the place. The owner, so the common knowledge went, liked this (for obvious reasons), and if you were a policeman or an FBI agent and you went in there, you got an extra-large sandwich with plenty of meat, they didn't skimp.

One afternoon, an FBI agent went in, and the counter boy was new, and he served up a wimpy little roast beef sandwich with barely any meat on it at all. The agent got so incensed that he pounded on the table and screamed "FBI! MORE ROAST BEEF!" Since that time, showing someone your credentials has become known as 'roast beef'ing the subject.

This of course never happened. Kessler tracked down the agent who supposedly did this thing, and was told A) he never said he was from the FBI, someone else in the deli did, half-jokingly, B) there was plenty of meat on the sandwich, it just wasn't very lean, and C) it was corned beef.

Take me back to the FBI-SAD Page.