Chapter 1
In Which The Pseudo Guy Takes Us
Straight Down CIA’s Kooky Rabbit-Hole
Almost nobody knew where Agency pseudonyms really came from. Everybody just knew they were funny, which is why they were called “Funny Names.” You had your true name, the one your Mom and Pop gave you, and either it was funny or it was not. And you had your Funny Name from Mother Agency. It was funny.
They gave you your Funny Name on Day One, and like it or not you were stuck. No matter how awful the name was you couldn’t change it, unless somehow it got blown to the Monégasque Principality or someplace else equally scary. Which actually did happen from time to time, when someone from Personnel misaddressed a letter advising a CIA employee in pseudonym that he or she had failed to take a mandatory course by the deadline. Those folks over in Personnel took their mandatory courses seriously.
But you couldn’t blow your own pseudo, or at least not without making it a certainty they would drop you back one grade on the General Services Pay Scale and reassign you as a Counterintelligence Officer faster than a Dutch madam can flick on the red light outside her Amsterdam lupanar at the start of a busy night’s work. And nobody stepped in that one if they could avoid it. So like I said, you were stuck.
A pseudonym was not the same as an alias. Don’t ask me to explain the pourquoi, Professor, because I can’t. That’s TOP SECRET information, and you’re not read-in, so far as I know. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Pseudonyms always came with a first name, a middle initial that didn’t stand for anything, like Harry S. Truman’s, and a last name all in capital letters. But you would never mistake a pseudonym for a true name, because there were no pseudonyms like Mike J. ROGERS, or Terri A. SEWELL, or Pete T. KING.
Instead, it would be Thaddius P. FANNYPAT. Or Clementine M. DARLIN. Or Vito J. VESUVIUS. This went on and on, for generation after generation of CIA employees. They just kept coming out like that, an unbroken chain of unique Funny Names, each destined to be handed out to a new employee on Day One. Supposedly they were intended to help maintain compartmentation, but the process had gone on for so long no one could remember exactly how.
Most folks thought the Funny Names were the product of some super-secret computer down in the basement of the Original Headquarters Building. And they were right, at least for a time. In fact one of the very first U.S. government mainframes, this slightly used ENIAC from the University of Pennsylvania, with all kinds of tubes and lights and punch cards and cables and stuff, was installed at the Agency back in 1961 for the sole purpose of spitting out Funny Names. The ENIAC filled three medium-sized rooms, and it did a pretty good job, that is until the day somebody unplugged it. Or rather, until the day The Pseudo Guy unplugged it.
Now, The Pseudo Guy — a proud Melungeon, Mormon, member of the Chestnut Ridge people of Barbour County, and former Marine — he was this shadowy, deeper-than-deep-cover figure, half-myth, half-legend, but all hero to those who knew the real story. Fact is, he wasn’t even a bona fide employee. His application had been rejected by some hardass from CIA’s Office of Security back in 1963, well after they started trying to kill Castro and just six months before they killed JFK. Apparently The Pseudo Guy had admitted during his pre-hire polygraph exam to thinking about Russian women when he was alone and feeling ruttish. It didn’t matter that everyone else did exactly the same thing. It was 1963 after all, and Russian women were dangerously sexy to everyone except Russian men. Everybody knew that.
But at CIA you couldn’t admit to that kind of risky thinking. Theoretically, at least, it put you too far outside the mainstream, and woe betide the Office of Security hardass who let you slide on it if you later proved to be any kind of problem. CIA Director John A. McCone would terminate guys for way less than that. Better not to take any chances.
So The Pseudo Guy was rejected, even though otherwise his application was flawless. And he was crushed. Showing up for work at CIA each day for twenty-five, thirty, or even thirty-five years had been his one dream in life. He sat alone at home for a whole week over there in Junior, West Virginia, brooding over this while thinking about Russian women and composing palindromes, and then he decided to do something about it. That’s when, hungry for revenge, he snuck onto the CIA Headquarters compound one evening disguised as a Nondescript Cleaning Lady — an official Agency job title — and slipped into the Building through an open window somebody had forgotten to shut. He made his way down to the basement, where he happened upon the door to the Funny Names ENIAC mainframe computer rooms. Stepping inside he assessed the situation, realized his life’s calling, took a deep breath, and unplugged the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. Then he sat down and started making up Funny Names.
* * *
From the outside everything looked normal. The Funny Names kept popping out, so no one in charge ever thought to go in there and check up on things. But even though all appeared as before, nothing would ever be the same.
The Pseudo Guy began modestly enough. After several false starts, his first completed Funny Name lay before him. Jane O. THORNE. He sat back and gazed at it lovingly, even though it wasn’t all that funny. Then, to complement it, he produced another one, and he gave it to himself. John O. THORNE. It was kind of like Eve and Adam, except without any Eve. Eve damned Eden, mad Eve.
Then he kept going. Howard W. BUTTONFLY. Barry Z. OVERFLOW. Tamara L. STUCCO. Alice G. PEACHTREE. Carl N. CUPCAKE. Barrington Q. GRIZZLYBOTTOM.
It didn’t take long before his little charade was uncovered, but it wasn’t by someone from the Office of Security. It was by a clique of Analysts, from the Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence, who found amusement in swapping handmade Pseudonym Trading Cards they wrote out for each other on little squares of cardboard. Somehow they noticed a difference in the quality of the Funny Names being issued. They were getting funnier. This the Analysts liked, and they resolved to find out why it was happening.
When they discovered John O. THORNE — The Pseudo Guy — camped out behind the Funny Names ENIAC computer down in the basement, the Analysts were awestruck. They all froze right in place, overcome by a grinding shift deep down in the fundament of their paradigms. The audacity of it! The rush, the sheer joy, of subverting the Agency in order to make her better!
Then those Fifth Column Analysts entered into a secret blood pact, each pledging his or her sacred honor to the protection and well-being of The Pseudo Guy. To hide his existence, they agreed to refer to him only as “The One.” They carted away two rooms’ worth of mainframe computer to make a proper home for their leader, leaving behind just enough tubes and lights and punch cards and cables and stuff to create a facade that would fool anybody else. The space was cramped, but at least The Pseudo Guy wasn’t cold like he’d been back in December 1950 at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.
Naturally, the Analysts set up a ratline to keep The Pseudo Guy fed, clothed, and stocked with parchment, quill pens, and gall ink, his preferred medium for journaling. They took turns sneaking him to and from the bathroom late each night. One Analyst even volunteered to be his girlfriend, on account of her prison pen pal had stopped answering her letters a year earlier. Luckily The Pseudo Guy took a liking to her, and he began calling her “Jane.”
Meanwhile, The Pseudo Guy kept at his craft, when he wasn’t thinking about Russian women or composing palindromes that is. With his support team behind him he picked up speed, cranking out name after name after name after name after name. He felt empowered. He knew he was a natural. He seemed unstoppable as he went about authoring all those damned Funny Names for his many wayward “offspring,” through whom he vicariously enjoyed picaresque espionage adventures. The Pseudo Guy just got better and better as time — years, eventually — went by.
Okay, that’s not exactly true. Like all the greats, The Pseudo Guy suffered a slump. It fell during 1975 to 1981, in what later came to be known as his “Less-Than-Stellar Middle Period.” Some on the support team said it was the fault of the Church Committee. Others claimed The Pseudo Guy was a closet Nixon fan who was hit hard by the President’s resignation. (And in fact The Pseudo Guy had secretly volunteered with CREEP, the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, making clandestine fundraising calls for Tricky Dick from his Headquarters basement hideout.) The conspiracy-
minded blamed the slump on James Jesus Angleton.
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t pretty. The Pseudo Guy’s Middle Period was marred by vainglory, and what all who were in on the secret agreed could only be called excess. First he began flaunting the master’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics his Oxford University alma mater, Balliol College, had conferred on him back in 1959, following his 1955 graduation in English and American Literature from Alderson-Broaddus College. Larry F. NIETZSCHE. Moe L. WITTGENSTEIN. Curly S. KIERKEGAARD. Joe M. HEIDEGGER. Emil G. HEGEL. Joe B. ARISTOTLE. Shemp I. KANT.
It got old quickly, and The Pseudo Guy rightly sensed he was alienating his audience. His over-educated solution, going hyper-minimalist, only seemed to make matters worse. Bo H. AN. Ed O. XI. Tad I. PI. And of course the ultimate, ██ .
Then he tried to go wide. Ignatius Q. HECKFETTER. Fanny J. YEOMANSWING. Ebenezer Z. MYPLACEORYOURS. Guadalupe S. ANY-PORTINASTORM. Not to mention the ill-starred █████████████████████████████████████████████ , blown to bits at Forward Operating Base █████.. There were those among the true believers who began to fret that The One had lost his way.
But he proved his critics wrong. He rallied. Gradually, in the early 1980s, he settled down, got back to his roots, and began knocking out hits again, one by one. Ralph W. LIFTSHITS. Maurice J. MICKLEWHYTE. Dick V. DYKE. Calvin B. ROADUS. Ken N. BARBIE. Tarzan N. JAPES. Bunny G. PUCKERPAW. Carlos W. DANGER. Conchita D. WURST. Honey R. DIPHTHONG. Magnus Y. MAGNUMOPUS. And — certainly not least among them — Jesus H. KRYSTE.
By late 1985, The One was back on track. Indeed, his later experi-
ments with art and architecture were innovative, startling even. Gus
F. KLIMT. Lucky M. VANDERROHE. Mikeymike M. MICHELANGELO-
DILODOVICOBUONARROTISIMONI. Edie S. WARHOL. Vinny V. GOGH. Candie X. KANDINSKY. Al M. PEI.
Now well into his seventies, The Pseudo Guy drilled down on what had always been one of the greatest challenges of his still unofficial career: Crafting pseudonyms in the form of full sentences. Or at least commands. These were the most prized of all Funny Names, and they could almost guarantee their owners eventual promotion into the Senior Intelligence Service. Some of the top officers at the Agency proudly bore these names, and they were the envy of all.
There was Winona T. HING, who darkened the doors of Ulan Bator for a while in the early 1990s. Miles R. LONG hung out in Kuala Lumpur. And Isa W. ELVIS lorded it over Caracas, Venezuela, for eight full years!
Carey A. SEVEREDHEAD retired as Deputy Chief of the Office of Security. He was replaced by Bill A. DEADBEAT, who reported directly to Hi C. DEADPEOPLE. Les B. LEGIT, Esq., he knew where all the bodies were buried. Sam R. OYKEN dug them all up, put them on display, and invited the public to view them for a nominal fee.
There were others. There was Iona K. CARR. And Ivana B. KING. And Sheba T. SWELL. Did I mention Cyn S. OMNIPRESENT? There was even a Weslee P. KNIGHTLY. And his cousin from Paw Paw, West Virginia, Helen T. NICHOLSSON.
Harris A. MESSE retired as the Agency’s Inspector General, then took a high-level job on the National Security Council. Hugo N. FURST, a big disappointment to The Pseudo Guy, he never amounted to much. But Willow R. LUGUBRIOUS got to serve as Acting Director for a whole week when CIA top dog Leon Panetta came down with the stomach flu after a trip to Ecuador.
KRAY had a full-sentence pseudonym. This gave him a certain automatic status with junior officers, since it was cool. But he never let it go to his head, which was probably a good thing, seeing as he eventually had to let it go.
Copyright © 2026 by Sam R. Oyken. All rights reserved.