In the 1970s, the keepers of sensitive information were largely hidden in the windowless vaults of the CIA. Women were largely seen as unimportant, with little to add to the clandestine network around the world. Liza Mundy, however, explores The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women in the CIA and the instrumental role they played in our national security.
A thrilling and monumental new history of the CIA that reveals how women have always played crucial, often unacknowledged roles in American spy craft, a hidden “sisterhood” of spies, analysts, operatives, and manhunters who, over a half-century, kept the free world safe and, more than once, saved it.
Book Jacket
Upon its creation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency instantly became one of the most important spy services in the world. Like every male-dominated workplace in Eisenhower America, the growing intelligence agency needed women to type memos, send messages, manipulate expense accounts, and keep secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—these clerks and secretaries rose to become some of the shrewdest, toughest operatives the agency employed. Because women were seen as unimportant, they moved unnoticed on the streets of Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets under the noses of the KGB. Back at headquarters, they built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer.
These women also battled institutional stereotyping and beat it. Men argued they alone could run spy rings. But the women proved they could be spymasters, too. During the Cold War, women made critical contributions to U.S. intelligence, sometimes as officers, sometimes as unpaid spouses, working together as their numbers grew. The women also made unique sacrifices, giving up marriage, children, even their own lives.
They noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. In the final years of the twentieth century, it was a close-knit network of female CIA analysts who warned about the rising threat of Al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, women rushed to join the fight as a new job, “targeter,” came to prominence. They showed that painstaking data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape—an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful efforts to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden and, later, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
With the same meticulous reporting and storytelling verve that she brought to her New York Times bestseller Code Girls, Liza Mundy has written an indispensable and sweeping history that reveals how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age.
Discussion Guide
Like Code Girls, The Sisterhood explores the role of discrimination. What do we as a society lose when institutionalized sexism prevents women from getting a seat at the table?
Many women in the book made unique sacrifices, such as foregoing marriage and children, to pursue their careers. Do you feel these sacrifices were “par for the course” in this field, or could the CIA have done more to support their personal lives?
The book discusses affairs and misconduct among CIA employees. Do you think the intelligence field differs from other industries in this regard? Do you think times have changed?
If you worked at the CIA, would you rather be an operative or an analyst?
If you liked this book, be sure to check out Liza Mundy's Code Girls too!
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