“Does Ms. Morales have any intention of subverting the interests of the United States?”

So my friend Emily is going through the process of obtaining clearance for her government job, and that required her to submit to a full background check, and she put me down as a reference. Now I’m on a phone call with some investigation agency representative, who I imagine is sitting in a darkened control room, her face illuminated by screens with world maps and red pinpoint icons on them, and she’s been probing me for insights on Emily’s character and national loyalty and this is now a question I have to answer.

My options:

“No.” This is, at first blush, the best answer. Sensible, practical, direct. A minimum of fuss. It may, however, be asserting a higher degree of confidence than I by all rights should have. Can I truthfully answer no? Is Emily secretly an agent of a foreign power? If she is, why would she tell me? And if she told me, could you trust me to tell you? What information do you gain from me saying no, if I’m expected to say no whether or not I’m telling the truth or lying? I want to help Emily obtain her clearance, and now I’m overthinking, what’s the best way to say no in order to minimise the chances that I’m actively hurting Emily’s cause? If I say no too forcefully, or too quickly, does it sound like I have something to hide about her? As if the delivery of my answer to this question is too perfect, and obviously rehearsed?

“No?” If I intonate my no as a question, it draws attention to my confusion with the question. Which is not inappropriate in the sense that I am, in fact, confused as to what you think you’re getting out of asking me it, but is inappropriate in the sense that I may be interpreted as betraying uncertainty on the subject of whether Emily plans to subvert the United States. I’ll sound shifty, and if my intonation is comical enough, maybe even insolent. If my goal is to not stand in the way of Emily obtaining her clearance, then uncertainty is counterproductive.

“I don’t think so.” I can sleep better with this answer. It doesn’t sound shifty or insolent or otherwise disrespectful. It’s more truthful than a bare no—if Emily does in fact turn out to be a Russian spy or whatever, then technically I haven’t lied. I’m just saying I don’t think so. That’s the most I can get away with, just in case Emily’s supposed deception ends up blowing into a national security issue and I end up having to testify in court that I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t think so. The only problem here is that I’ve already been saying no to the past series of questions about Emily, so if I switch to I don’t think so, that might sound suspicious.

“Not to my knowledge.” “Not that I’m aware of.” More direct ways of asserting the above.

“It depends on what you mean by ‘subvert the interests of the United States’.” Ooh. I mean, with all this speculation on espionage and such, you have got my train of thought barrelling down into the thickets of definitions. Something tells me that following where this leads would be more trouble than it’s worth.

“Not any more than you or I have.” Without having dived into the brambles of what “subvert the interests of the United States” actually means, it’s still possible that it has definitions permissive enough that it applies to practically everybody. In that case, the truthful answer would be yes, but that would be horribly misleading. This wording is an implicit attempt to say, whatever definition of subversion you’re working with, Emily is no more questionable than anybody of us. But now I’ve explicitly drawn my own loyalty, as well as yours, into question. Aie.

Something even more creative. Oh gosh it’s already been twenty seconds of silence and you’re still waiting on a response from me! That already makes me sound suspicious! I haven’t got any more time! No! No!