In this memoir, a journalist drolly and frankly discusses her training, day-to-day work, and eventual burnout as a case officer in the CIA. When 26-year-old Lindsay Moran applied to the CIA, she thought she was signing up for James Bond-style excitement, travel to exotic locations, and the opportunity to serve her country. Instead, she faced chauvinism from co-workers and superiors, a towering pile of tedious paperwork, and a profession that forced her to compromise her ethics on a regular basis and lie to her loved ones.

A former CIA case officer describes the idealistic ambitions that motivated her Harvard education and efforts to gain acceptance into the CIA before her life as a spy proved to be not only less glamorous than expected, but unsettlingly unprincipled and haphazard, in a humorous personal memoir that recounts the author's witness to tragic intelligence failures. Reprint.

A former CIA case officer describes the idealistic ambitions that motivated her Harvard education and efforts to gain acceptance into the CIA before her life as a spy proved to be not only less glamorous than expected, but unsettlingly unprincipled and haphazard, in a humorous personal memoir that recounts the author's witness to tragic intelligence failures. Reprint.