Heidi August was one of the first women station chiefs and later rose to Chief of Operations of the Counterterrorism Center, central to America’s post 9/11 security and military strategies. 

Mundy describes August as a “huntress,” motivated by her desire to prevent and avenge the killing of Americans by terrorists. August provides the emotional core of the book and is its closest thing to a protagonist: her experiences are used to both open the book and these passages are the most intimate and novelistic, portraying her personal motivations and inner monologue. In the Prologue, a flash-forward to 1985 when August is drawn into the response to the EgyptAir hijacking, August’s empathy for one of the female victims is used as The Sisterhood’s emotional catalyst, encapsulating the bond between women, their dedication, and the marginal nature of their position within the security services. This treatment of August also highlights Mundy’s argument that female perspectives and responses, often demeaned as “too emotional” are a source of moral strength and motivation.

Fran P. Moore is a former senior CIA executive who served as the Director of Analysis from 2010 to 2014, making her one of the highest-ranking women in the agency’s history. Her leadership of the analytic enterprise came during the post-9/11 decade, characterized by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing focus on anti-terrorism. In The Sisterhood, Moore represents the proven possibility of women to excel in the highest levels of institutional leadership, highlighting the “excellence and persistence” of such women in overcoming institutional sexism (372). She is positioned as a crucial link in the “chain of solidarity and achievement” which mentored and supported other women throughout the CIA (372), and which characterizes the book’s eponymous “sisterhood.”

Gina M. Bennett is a veteran counterterrorism analyst who began her career at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) before moving to the CIA. Working in the years before the 9/11 attacks, she was early to identify the emerging threat of transnational foreign-fighter networks such as al-Qaeda. She is known for the 1993 analysis titled “The Wandering Mujahidin,” now recognized as a landmark piece of predictive intelligence. In it, Bennett documented the post-Soviet flow of Arab fighters in Afghanistan, identifying Osama bin Laden as a leader, and reframing the security threat as a networked, global movement of stateless actors.

In The Sisterhood, Bennett is described as “clear-eyed, even empathetic,” (207) and embodies the book’s central thesis that the perspectives of women, discounted by a skeptical male hierarchy, proved to be crucial to US national security. Her story act as is an argument for of the full inclusion of women within the security services and a vindication of their pre-9/11 contributions. In Chapter 15, Mundy also combines Bennet’s experience in 1993 of combining late pregnancy, labor, and motherhood with the pressures of her career, going into labor at her desk and receiving woks calls while recovering from a C-section. Through this, Bennet exemplifies a specifically female form of professional dedication.

Cynthia “Cindy” Storer was a CIA analyst who specialized in mapping the structure and evolution of al-Qaeda through the late 1980s and early 1990s. She worked through the critical pre- and post-9/11 transition toward counterterrorism targeting and network disruption. Storer was among the first analysts assigned to the Afghanistan portfolio at the CIA, where she focused on the flow of foreign fighters and the developing hierarchy of al-Qaeda. Her work was instrumental in defining al-Qaeda as a coherent organization with a defined structure, including couriers, training sites, and financial nodes.

In Mundy’s narrative, Storer’s career exemplifies the book’s claim that women performed the invisible, painstaking legwork that enabled high-profile operational successes: Storer herself notes that “women will do the thing that’s not sexy” (236). Her “heroic” persistence in tracking a nascent threat, often against managerial skepticism, underscores the book’s theme of women’s essential but undervalued contributions. Mundy also emphasizes that, after retiring from the CIA, Storer became a prominent public educator appearing on broadcasts such as Manhunt. In this role, she helped to highlight the critical, behind-the-scenes work of the “sisterhood” of analysts who first identified the threat of al-Qaeda. This work mirrors Mundy’s own efforts to revisit and preserve the institutional memory of female intelligence officers.

Mundy identifies a number of key Cold War-era female intelligence officers whose experiences illustrate “the sisterhood” during the 1950s-1980s. Particularly significant are Eloise Page, Jean Ruth Vertefeuille, and Martha D. Peterson

Eloise Page was a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and a pioneering CIA operations executive who became the agency’s first female chief of station. Her career bridged the foundational eras of US intelligence, from the OSS of World War II to the Cold War and the rise of modern terrorism concerns in the late 1970s. Mundy presents Page as a “trailblazer” whose promotions broke significant structural barriers, proving the ability of women in the highest levels of overseas command. Mundy also notes Page was an ambiguous figure in the sisterhood who “aspired, unsuccessfully, to truly be one of the old boys,” (xxi) and openly competed with other women rather than supporting them.

Jeanne Ruth Vertefeuille was a CIA counterintelligence (CI) officer best known for leading the small, predominantly female task force that uncovered the notorious Soviet mole Aldrich Ames. Mundy portrays her as the “Miss Marple of Russia House” (xxi), an unassuming but brilliant investigator whose career spanned the late Cold War mole hunts that reshaped the agency’s security and CI practices. Vertefeuille’s story exemplifies the book’s theme of women officers’ persistence and technical rigor and the significance of their work, despite their limited status and resources within the CIA.

Martha “Marti” Peterson was a CIA case officer and the first female operative assigned to work in Moscow, one of the most hostile and challenging environments of the Cold War. Under the cover of a visa clerk, Peterson’s primary mission was to handle the high-level asset TRIGON, a Soviet GRU officer. She ran dead drops and other classic human intelligence (HUMINT) operations until she was ambushed and arrested by the KGB at a drop site in 1977. Though she was quickly expelled from the country, her capture underscored the immense stakes of operating in the Soviet capital. Operating in a “denied area” under constant KGB surveillance, her story represents an early operational breakthrough for women in the agency’s hardest targets. Mundy uses Peterson’s experience to validate the argument that gender could be an asset in clandestine access, as women were often underestimated, while also showing how it could compound personal risk.