Shadow Cell
An Insider Account of America's New Spy War
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4.2 • 48 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | Barnes & Noble's Best Books of 2025
A thrilling firsthand account by husband-and-wife CIA operatives who, against all odds, triumphed in a deadly cat-and-mouse game against a mole within the agency—an unprecedented insider account of 21st-century spycraft in the tradition of Argo and Black Ops.
Andrew and Jihi Bustamante were a “tandem couple”: married spies who’d dedicated their lives to the CIA. They met as trainees at Langley, and got married while hunting terrorists across the globe. Then, suddenly, they were assigned to a mission so sensitive and explosive that the CIA still has never acknowledged it. The CIA’s source network in a country code-named "Falcon"—one of America’s most formidable rivals—had been compromised by a mole, and the agency needed a new way to collect intelligence there. Young newlyweds, the Bustamantes were considered safe choices for this daunting task precisely because they had no experience in Falcon. They were also loyal, forgettable, and completely disposable—operatives who could help to strengthen the CIA’s position in Falcon while simultaneously serving as bait for the mole.
But although their superiors at the CIA didn’t realize it, the Bustamantes also brought another advantage to the table: a granular understanding of how terrorist cells operate, and how the agency could exploit those same tactics to keep America safe. Assembling a rag-tag team of fellow operatives and recruiting new sources from Falcon, the Bustamantes pioneered a new way of spying by building a cell of their own—right at the heart of the CIA.
The propulsive, untold tale of one of history’s greatest intelligence crises and the unlikely band of agents who were sent in to clean up the mess, Shadow Cell allows us to peer behind the curtain to see how today’s spy wars are being fought—and won.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Husband-and-wife CIA operatives Andrew and Jihi Bustamante deliver a hair-raising account of their years building an unlikely spy cell for a major intelligence mission. The Bustamentes met as CIA trainees and married in their late 20s. Much of the narrative revolves around a heavily redacted operation (city, country, and target names are all obscured) in which a CIA intelligence network operating within the borders of a U.S. adversary was compromised by a mole. The Bustamentes were tasked by their handlers with assembling their own team of operatives to ferret out the traitor and gather new, clean intelligence. Between heart-pounding accounts of high-stakes backgammon games and contrived playdates between the children of their colleagues and their targets, the Bustamentes offer an alluring crash-course on spycraft from assessing suspicious actors to shaking off "minders" assigned to surveil one's every move. Though even the Bustamantes don't know the consequences of some of their work, the authors pack in plenty of suspense, providing the cliffhangers and paranoid atmosphere of a John le Carré novel. It's hard not to yearn for a less censored account, but there's enough here to satisfy fans of espionage fiction.
Customer Reviews
No Substance
Sounded good. Not worth the read.