Liza Mundy’s 2023 nonfiction book, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA, chronicles the multi-generational story of American female intelligence officers, spanning the World War II–era Office of Strategic Services (OSS) through the post-9/11 War on Terror. The narrative follows a succession of women who stood up to a deeply entrenched, male-dominated culture to become clandestine case officers, station chiefs, and analysts. The book explores how they played a pivotal role in many of the agency’s most significant operations, including the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The book explores themes of The Paradoxical Advantage of Female Invisibility in Espionage, The Institutionalization of the “Old Boys’ Club,” and The Evolution of the Sisterhood.

The Sisterhood is the work of award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Liza Mundy, who specializes in exploring female experiences and the overlooked contributions of women in American culture and history. The book serves as a thematic sequel to her acclaimed bestseller, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, continuing the story of women in US intelligence after the war. On release, The Sisterhood became a national bestseller and was named a Best Book of the Year by publications including Smithsonian Magazine and Foreign Policy. It contextualizes the professional struggles of its subjects against the backdrop of major global events, including the Cold War, the rise of international terrorism, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This guide is based on the 2024 Crown paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, graphic violence, physical abuse, child abuse, child sexual abuse, and death.

Summary

In November 1985, the CIA station chief in Malta, Heidi August, identifies the body of an American passenger, Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp. Rogenkamp is one of 58 passengers shot when terrorists from the Abu Nidal Organization hijacked Egyptair Flight 648. Feeling a kinship with the Rogenkamp, a single, self-supporting woman had worked abroad for the US government, August vows to bring the killers to justice. The event solidifies her resolve to shift her career focus from Cold War Communism to the rising threat of global terrorism.

Mundy details how the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), is created during World War II. Under its director, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the OSS establishes assessment centers to screen recruits. Here, men and women are tested differently, with women often given menial tasks to gauge their reactions to being undervalued. Many thousands of highly educated women join, many of whom will forge eminent careers, including Mary Bancroft and Cora Du Bois. When the CIA is formed in 1947, many of these women stay on but find themselves in a new male-dominated culture rife with sexism.

The story follows the first generation of female officers. Heidi August begins as a clerk in the late 1960s. During her first posting in Tripoli, she is one of the first to report the 1969 coup led by Muammar Qaddafi. Under the mentorship of station chief David Whipple, she gains operational experience, including the 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh. Meanwhile, Lisa Manfull, a diplomat’s daughter with exceptional language skills, is recruited in 1966 but is denied full case officer training. After marrying fellow officer David Harper, she is forced to resign to accompany him overseas, a standard practice for women. As Lisa Manfull Harper, she works unpaid under “housewife cover,” a common but unofficial role for CIA wives who used their inconspicuous status to assist their husbands’ operations.

Both August and Harper fight to become certified case officers. August is told she must finish first in her training class at the CIA’s academy, “the Farm.” Following this, she takes her first assignment as a case officer, targeting overlooked female clerks in Geneva to steal cryptographic technology. After years of unpaid work, Harper also returns to the Farm, graduates first in her class, and finally earns her certification, developing a deliberately “feminine” style of spycraft that relies on empathy. Despite their successes, these and other women face resistance from an entrenched old-boy network, in which powerful male division heads were known as “barons.” Early female station chiefs like Eloise Page and Sue McCloud are often isolated and unhelpful to other women. At headquarters, women begin to push back. Staff operations officer Harritte “Tee” Thompson files the first successful sex discrimination lawsuit in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Barbara Colby, wife of a former director, successfully lobbies for pension benefits for divorced spouses. A team of female counterintelligence officers, including Jeanne Vertefeuille and Sandy Grimes, launches a multi-year mole hunt that uncovers the traitor Aldrich Ames, a mole who had devastated the CIA’s network of Soviet assets. In the 1990s, a high-profile lawsuit by case officer Janine Brookner and a larger class-action suit by hundreds of other female officers force the agency to address systemic discrimination. In the wake of these changes, Harper becomes the first woman to head a division, but retires in the face of intense sexist criticism.

Mundy focuses on the CIA’s analytical arm, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). In 1986, a young analyst named Cindy Storer begins tracking the network of “mujahideen” fighters and their financier, Osama bin Laden, during the final years of the Soviet-Afghan War. She is joined by a small, informal group of other female analysts, including Barbara Sude, an Islamic history expert, and Gina Bennett, a State Department analyst who in 1993 writes the first intelligence report identifying bin Laden’s organization, “Al-Qa’ida,” and warning it will target the US. Their work is largely ignored in the post–Cold War “peace dividend” era. The Counterterrorist Center (CTC) is formed in 1986 but is considered a career backwater; as a result, its bin Laden unit, later known as Alec Station, is staffed mostly by women.

Throughout the 1990s, the women of Alec Station struggle to get their warnings heard. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a 1993 shooting by Mir Aimal Kansi, and the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa highlight the growing threat, but terrorism remains a low priority for the American administration. As the threat level intensifies, the analysts track multiple plots, including the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. On August 6, 2001, Barbara Sude titles the President’s Daily Brief as “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,” warning of hijackings and attacks inside the country. On September 11, 2001, these predictions come true. The CTC analysts watch the attacks from their basement office and are ordered to remain at their posts while the rest of headquarters evacuates.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the CTC becomes the agency’s central focus. The analytic unit expands into the Office of Terrorism Analysis (OTA), and a new generation of women joins the agency. The discipline of “targeting,” a field dominated by women, becomes crucial to hunting terrorists. The CIA also begins its controversial “enhanced interrogation” program, creating a moral schism within the sisterhood. Some officers, like Jennifer Matthews and Alfreda Bikowsky, participate in or defend the use of coercive techniques, while others, like Cindy Storer and Lisa Harper, refuse. The hunt for bin Laden is reinvigorated under the leadership of Fran Moore, head of the Directorate of Analysis. Using new technology, female analysts and targeters focus on bin Laden’s courier network, making a key breakthrough by tracking a courier to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, building evidence that bin Laden is hiding there. When, in December 2009, a suicide bomber kills seven CIA personnel at a base in Khost, Afghanistan, including Alec Station chief Jennifer Matthews, the hunt for bin Laden is intensified. On May 2, 2011, a team of Navy SEALs raids the compound and kills bin Laden, an action enabled by the decade-long, painstaking work of the predominantly female analytic and targeting teams. 

The epilogue reflects on the lives of the CIA women, noting their sacrifices, successes, and the complex legacy of their fight for a place within the CIA. Mundy concludes that their struggle paved the way for future generations of women and fundamentally transformed American intelligence.