> American surveillance agencies even hired people with backgrounds in poetry to be spies and code breakers because of their skills in close reading, language analysis and critical thinking.

Or, more likely, because declaring a major in poetry at a high-tuition private university correlates with having access to inherited money. Or at the very least, with not urgently needing money upon graduation.

It's not a class thing. Spy agencies (very rationally) prefer staff who are as unsusceptible to bribery as possible.