This is John Batchelor, conversation with Liza Mundy, the author of The Sisterhood of Spies,

story of women at the CIA over decades.

It's also the story of the CIA.

And in the 1980s to 1990s, the CIA mission changed profoundly.

The end of the Soviet Union, the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, the end of chasing Carla.

And what came out of it was recognition that terrorism and counterterrorism were worthy mission statements.

Heidi August, a CIA officer, discovers it as well. And here, Liza

Mundi tells the story of why Heidi moved from Soviet scalduggery to terrorism that still plagues

us. Liza Mundi, more of this later.

The Counterterrorism Center was a very small office, just as you say, at headquarters,

the CIA that was created in the mid-1980s. Just as you say, Heidi August handled a terrorist hijacking on the island of Malta.

And those of us, you know, who were adults in the 1980s, remember this period of hijackings,

the Achille-Laro, certainly the explosion of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. There was a terrifying series of terrorist incidents in the mid-1980s.

When the Cold War was still,

was still very much the central mission of the CIA. And the CIA and the United States

in general didn't know how to handle these. Target Jackings didn't know how to address terrorism,

which is different from fighting communism. And so Heidi

decided to make this her mission in life was to find a way to deal with these hijackings,

which were resulting in the deaths of children and civilians and women and just ordinary civilians, you know,

the willingness of terrorists in the mid-1980s to hijack planes and bomb airports and kill civilians

was very disturbing to her and having to place a phone call to the mother of a dead young woman

who was a civilian employee of the U.S. military and Heidi felt a real kinship with her.

...