Honest Book, fascinating split in opinion | Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy

book: Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy | Lindsay Moran

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	• Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy Lindsay Moran Berkley Trade, 2005 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 95 reviews view larger image
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Entertaining

This book is a quick read and very interesting. Some reviewers marked the book down because she did too well in tests and was very physically fit. They should probably lighten up. After all, she never would have made it into the CIA if she were a stupid sloth.

The author has a good sense of humor. Because of the humorous and entertaining writing one hardly notices that lower level spying is really sort of dull. And I notice folks have given the book some really weird tags. Perhaps they didn't read it.

Honest Book, fascinating split in opinion

I am fascinated by the split reviews here. They read like a David Brooks column on what is dividing America.

I am on the "fan" side of this book. Mainly because the book is honest, and what else counts? She could have easily have written a book that tries to make herself look better, or read like a scholarly assessment of the CIA, but there are plenty such books and such scholarship. Perhaps that is what some of the readers were expecting, but you have to, in my mind, judge a book by what it was trying to do. She was trying to give an honest account of her life in the CIA, and that's what you get. If she was thinking about who she wanted to date - well, people do actually spend time thinking about that kind of thing.

The people who think they are better prose stylists that Lindsay Moran are free to have their preferences but are obviously over their heads. She may not be Nabakov but the prose has a light flow and gentle honesty. As most readers remarked, they read the book in a single sitting. Writing that kind of prose is actually alot harder than it looks. Try it sometime.

My criticism, if that is what it is, is that the book really is a bit too light, a CIA croissant of sorts. I suspect the publishers and the editors had a role in this - they have too much a tendency to shove books into categories, and here Devil Wears Prada and similar books were probably in mind. Like some, I would have liked a little more analysis or insight into actually reforming the CIA -- it all is shoved in at the end, and far too quickly.

But then again roughly its all there for you to figure out: too much spending on wasteful projects, too much of the means replacing the ends (like the number of agents being taken as more important that quality), and too much ease of manipulation by the Administration.

Finally as for those who this Lindsay was disloyal or unappreciative, she is honest: she could easily have made more money and had much more freedom in various other careers. Since when is wanting to go to fun parties in your 20s unnatural or a sign that you're a bad person? Last time I checked James Bond made it to plenty of parties --

In fact from this book it seems to me obvious the CIA will have trouble recruiting independent thinkers and some of the most talented people in the U.S. given how unattractive the job is, comparatively.

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Call me naïve, but when I was a girl-watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy-all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA.

Getting in was a story in itself. I peed in more cups than you could imagine, and was nearly condemned as a sexual deviant by the staff psychologist. My roommates were getting freaked out by government investigators lurking around, asking questions about my past.

Finally, the CIA was training me to crash cars into barriers at 60 mph. Jump out of airplanes with cargo attached to my body. Survive interrogation, travel in alias, lose a tail. One thing they didn't teach us was how to date a guy while lying to him about what you do for a living. That I had to figure out for myself.

Then I was posted overseas. And that's when the real fun began.

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