It's the 1960s and nerdy high school English teacher Allen Quimp is preparing to publish his own personal and poltitical manifesto: "The Grammar Crisis in the English-Speaking World". However his snooty, materialistic wife yearns for a plush lifestyle. When Daisy pressures him to get a "real" job (a six figure salary will do), Quimps buys himself time by telling her that his teaching job is really just a cover for his secret employment by the C.I.A. Daisy wastes no time blabbing the news all over Washington. Few are inclined to believe her until one of Quimp's students, a visiting Russian ballet dancer, impulsively decides to defect. Quimp is soon handed the credit for this political feat, is hastily inducted into the C.I.A. for real and finds himself not only shipped off to Cuba, but knee-deep in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs conflict.