Adam Ciralsky has been a successful writer and filmmaker for two decades. But it’s the job he had before that that catches people by surprise.

“In talking to people over the years, when you say you were an attorney at the CIA, they’re like, ‘The CIA has attorneys?'” Ciralsky said in an interview in a coffeeshop in his hometown of Milwaukee.

Ciralsky’s time with the CIA — he was hired in 1996, right out of law school, and worked for the agency till 2000 — was the inspiration for “The Recruit,” the new hit Netflix series starring Noah Centineo.