Yeah, and every time I went on travel, they used to tell me to write down, word for word any conversation I had with any non-US citizen and turn in the transcript to the security goons.

For a while, I'd grab an extra copy of any meeting agendas and just send that in. After a while, I just started ignoring everything those retards said.
There was never any reaction, either way.
Silly story: First big post-cold-war conference where we actually got to meet face-to-face with the Russians who were working on the same topic. (Not even remotely sensitive or classified stuff.) It was in that big conference center in Davos, where you see world leaders meeting on TV. Everyone was being very polite and (figuratively) scratching each other's back. But there was this one Russian guy who just
lit into me. He was
convinced that the CIA was copying his personal lab notebooks every night and sending the translations directly to me. Then I was publishing all of his ideas before he had a chance to! I have no idea who this guy was.
At first, I thought this must be "Russian humor," but he seemed to be serious.