[Popular Mechanics] Mary Embree entered into a life of public service fresh out of high school in the late 1960s. She started out with what was then called the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs), but as she tells it, a typewriter repairman visiting her office suggested she set her sights higher.
So that’s precisely what Mary Embree did, and she didn’t just aim a little above the VA. She shot for the proverbial moon, the "Cadillac of government agencies": the Central Intelligence Agency.
"There were very few women at CIA ... other than secretaries," Embree recalled in the 1998 TV documentary Secrets of the CIA, "It was very sexist." The interview process was rigorous, and Embree found it to be excessively probing. They even asked her if she was a virgin, a question she felt "embarrassed" to answer. |