Max Claro learned and practiced more than ten professions, garnering experience in all of them. Among other occupations, he has worked as a postman, sleeping-car conductor, nurse, paramedic, journalist, and helicopter pilot. In the 1970s and 1980s, Claro worked for the CIA and the German Foreign Intelligence Service in the former Eastern Bloc countries as well as in the Middle East and Central America, generally using one of his occupations to go undercover.