Esse aqui está me incomodando e eu finalmente encontrei!
Pulpworld por R. K. Lyon
Aqui está a conversa que você lembrou como aparece na história.
The questioning passed to Senator Hemiwit. "Director Argus, in your report as part of the justification for continued funding of the FBI, you list the value of property recovered by the Bureau in the past year. Most of the items, three hundred seventeen dollars' worth of recovered brooms, six hundred thirty-six dollars in cats strayed across state lines, and so forth seem reasonable, but you list one item of eighty-seven times the entire capital assets of the United States."
"Operator √2 saved the United States from total destruction eighty-seven times last year."
O final irônico que você mencionou é que
the agent sits down to enjoy reading a science fiction story about a crazy, impossible world, that is our world.
Ele apareceu em Contos microcósmicos , uma fonte fértil de perguntas sobre ID da história.