The Sisterhood
The Secret History of Women at the CIA
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency's secrets. Despite discrimination – even because of it – women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA's shrewdest operatives.
They were unlikely spies – and that's exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA's critical archives – first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn't see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda – though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside.
After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the agency as a new job, targeter, came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape – an eff ort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA's successful eff ort to track down bin Laden in his Pakistani compound.
Propelled by the same meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling that infused Code Girls, The Sisterhood offers a riveting new perspective on history, revealing how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, and how their silencing made the world more dangerous.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawing on more than 100 interviews with former CIA operatives, journalist Mundy (Code Breakers) demonstrates in this eye-opening survey that female operatives have made important contributions to the agency from its 1945 founding to the present day, despite facing decades of discrimination. Mundy shows how, in the CIA's early years, most women agents hoped to enter the exciting world of undercover intelligence, but instead were systematically sidelined into positions as secretaries, typists, and similar support roles. Sexual harassment and office sex were also common, at least through the 1980s. And yet, Mundy makes clear, women agents were often able to obtain and analyze information that their male counterparts could not. For example, a woman perceived as a secretary or housewife could attend events and listen to important conversations without being suspected of spying. Likewise, female agents trapped at desk jobs in "analysis" and "targeting" departments made tremendous advances in those fields; Mundy recounts the story of Cindy Storer, who as a senior analyst in 1992 was the first at the CIA to realize that Osama bin Laden should be considered a serious threat. But Mundy is no hagiographer; her evenhanded account tracks how women's growing influence led to increased opportunities for abuses of power, including analyst Alfreda Bikowsky's exuberant support for the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used against terrorism suspects after 9/11. It adds up to a vivid and immersive new history of the CIA.
