REMEMBERING THE FIRST COLD WAR AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND COLD WAR: 3/8: The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Sisterhood-Secret-History-Women-CIA/dp/0593238176/ref=asc_df_0593238176&mcid=d8b024f8944a3cfb869a04c0b84ba964?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80608071597838&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584207596928557&psc=1
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 effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful effort 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.
1920 POLAND
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | CBS I on the World, the book is The Sister Hood, the Secret History of Women at the |
| 0:09.2 | CIA. |
| 0:10.2 | Liza Mundi is the author, and we're following Heidi August, the adventures of much of the 70s and 80s |
| 0:16.9 | and 90s and into the 21st century can be told from Heidi's point of view she's an all-purpose adventurous and we now go to |
| 0:26.5 | Germany where she's with Hans Jensen but importantly she goes to Stockholm |
| 0:31.9 | where she meets David Whipple, a Dartmouth graduate who I picture has |
| 0:36.2 | a bald head or a shaved head and unusual amounts of energy. |
| 0:41.8 | And he also is fervently preaching against something that they called |
| 0:47.7 | women's lib in 1970s. It's all gone now, but it's ancient history and yet at the same time he empowers Heidi as his office assistant |
| 0:57.8 | He trusts her why right what is what is what is what is what is Heidi say about that? |
| 1:03.0 | Well, Heidi is obviously very competent and certainly very trustworthy and she, you know, when she wanted to work for the CIA originally as a child she'd |
| 1:13.4 | envisioned living in Europe that that's where that's sort of the way everybody |
| 1:16.4 | starts you know they envisioned this to end up in Paris or end up in Germany |
| 1:20.3 | and and obviously her first posting was in Africa and many officers would discover that Africa actually was a very a place where you could really improve yourself. |
| 1:30.0 | You weren't working in a big bureaucracy and she had started to learn what they called |
| 1:34.7 | tradecraft in Libya. |
| 1:37.0 | She had proved her competence, and so she was learning the streetcraft of making dead drops, |
| 1:42.4 | leaving messages for CIA assets. |
| 1:45.8 | And she continued to just sort of pick up on these techniques handling when she was in Europe working for David Whipple she would |
| 1:55.2 | often handle people who were being expeltrated from from Soviet occupied |
| 2:00.1 | countries in Eastern Europe and that was a very important part of the CIA's role in Europe |
| 2:06.3 | was preventing a Soviet incursion into unoccupied Europe but but also smuggling defectors and other assets out of occupied countries. |
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