Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy [Hardcover]

Lindsay Moran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2004

A clever, funny memoir from a young woman who fulfills her Mission: Impossible dreams by joining the CIA, only to discover that the life of a spy is not at all what she expected.

Lindsay Moran was a bright-eyed, idealistic Harvard graduate who hoped to serve her patriotic duty while living a life she'd first dreamed of as a child watching James Bond movies and reading Harriet the Spy. After applying to the CIA and passing lie detector tests, background investigations, and psychological screenings, she soon found herself in training at the Farm, learning how to crash cars through barriers at a hundred miles an hour, not to mention how to withstand interrogation.

But she was simultaneously learning that the life of a spy wasn't nearly the glamorous-not to mention principled-job she thought it would be. Her first posting, to Macedonia, confirmed it, as she witnessed firsthand the culture inside an organization whose intelligence failures led to tragic results during her own tenure. With a true story both thoughtful and funny, a wonderful new talent pulls open the doors to the CIA.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Lindsay Moran's Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, the author comes across is an amusingly candid cross between Bridget Jones and James Bond, with a little Gloria Steinem thrown in to remind readers of the inherent sexism that runs rampant both in the US government and abroad. Moran, a few years out of Harvard and fresh from a Fulbright scholarship in Bulgaria, decides to follow her childhood dream of becoming and spy and, after a grueling interview process that involves several polygraphs and an abandoned foreign boyfriend, goes to work for the CIA. What follows is a surprisingly honest behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to become a real-life CIA agent, signal-sites and all.

Yet more than an insider's guide to the life and times of an undercover agent, Blowing My Cover is a story about a highly educated, obviously intelligent yet occasionally insecure young woman trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, and who she wants to have beside her. As we follow Moran to the "Farm", a six-month training camp where new recruits are forced into alarmingly real POW situations and asked to perform death-defying car chases reminiscent of old Dukes of Hazard episodes, we also witness her extreme loneliness at being cut off from her friends and family and her fear that she'll never meet "the one" and settle down. One of the most poignant scenes happens early on in Moran's training, when she meets up with some friends in New York at a party and realizes she can't even tell her closest confidents what she does for a living.

For anyone who's ever wondered what it really means to be a CIA agent, Moran's tale is a worthwhile read. Better yet, for anyone who's ever wondered what she wants to be when she grows up (even at age 30), Blowing My Cover is an ultimately hopeful story of possibilities. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly

When Harvard grad Moran entered CIA training in her late 20s, her expectations had more to do with Harriet the Spy and James Bond than with drudge work or service; the reality, as she represents it in this memoir of her training and case work, was a sexist environment filled with career-oriented, shallow people, "an elaborate game for men who'd never really grown up." Beginning in 1998 as a case officer in Macedonia, Moran finds the work dull and admittedly achieves little of note in her brief career; smooth writing and wit regarding the humdrum mechanics of spookdom—from having her alias's credit card rejected for nonpayment to the thousands of little lies she must invent and remember—carry the book. Her apprehension about preying on people from cash-poor economies with bribes is easily overcome; a boyfriend in Bulgaria helps ease her loneliness. During the events of 9/11 neither she nor her field boss have any idea what is going on ("We worked for the CIA for chrissake. Shouldn't we have known?"). Though Moran is a likable spy, the wait for significant insights or breakthroughs goes mostly unrewarded for writer and reader alike. Expressing disillusionment with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, frustration with excessive bureaucracy and desire for a more fulfilling personal life, Moran simply quits one day.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (December 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399152393
• ISBN-13: 978-0399152399
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #443,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bridget Jones meets James Bond and is dissapointed he does not really do all those things in the movie, August 7, 2005

By 

Kakha (Tbilisi - Tiflis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (Hardcover)

I had heard someone call this book Bridget Jones meets James Bond. I agree.
I am not even finished with the book, but there were parts of it I could not believe...

Moran says she was at top of... everything (she kind of says it way too often, really). Everyone around her is faceless negativity - wimp, lacking common sense, arrogant a**, etc. Only she stands out in her shining brightness, Harvard top, "overachiever, acing in every test ever taken", etc, etc.

And then she is told, she is not going to be scaling walls stealing secrets from the safe, etc. She hears it first time... during CO (Case Officer) training?! and has issues about making people betray their country??? She heard it the first time that this is what her job is about WHILE already being in the CIA? WOW! what a shock must have it been...

Now, I understand that many people, not interested in the topic, may have the same perception as Moran did about what spy does, and it is totally ok, until and unless you actually plan to BECOME one!
My point is: how can a bright person which Moran claims to be (declares it over and over), go into job requiring so much commitment, without even checking up what the job actually does beyond information obtained from Harriet the Spy books and 007 movies?
COs job is to manipulate people. If someone questions obtainability of such a "secret" information, give it a try... Google it, if don't want to read any books (if you do - Espionage by Ernest Volkman first of many that comes to mind)... the fact that she did not know such a basic truth before being told at CIA training - is asinine.

Anyway, I am still not saying that book is not readable. It is. There are few laughs too: some intended by author, and some - not, if you know what I mean. My problem with the book is attitudes, self-assertion and assertion of others by author.

And finally, one category of people for whom I say this book is a must read - is CIA recruitment officers, who should take notes on a profile of a person they never want to hire.

70 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but immature, August 20, 2005

By 

Christopher Gauthier "disgusted by Moran" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (Hardcover)

In an attempt to remain fair I will review this book from two perspectives: (1) as a literary work and (2) my personal opinion of what was written. First, the book was well written. It flows smoothly and the pages turn quickly. She does not get bogged down on unimportant details and she captures the key points without getting wordy. I am not by any means a fast reader and I got through this book in just a few days. From this perspective I had had no problem.

With regard to what she actually wrote, I am utterly flabbergasted. Lindsay Moran embodies and epitomizes all that is wrong with my generation. Throughout the entire book I can not distinguish between her attitude and that of some spoiled little rich kid, e.g. Paris Hilton. She never once takes responsibility for her own actions or choices. She berates the CIA for not changing its policies and procedures to be more accommodating to her. Someone within the Agency obviously did not get the memo that the world revolves around Ms. Moran.

I will start with a harmless example. Throughout the book she casually mentions her diet, usually consisting of some sort of fast food or other high fat, high calorie food, not to mention copious amounts of alcohol. Yet, near the end of the book when she laments about clothes not fitting and the weight she has gained, she blames the Agency and the job of a case officer being fairly sedentary. She never even entertains the thought that if she laid off a couple of bottles of wine a week and who knows how many McBurgers, she might have been able to better maintain her weight.

While stationed in Macedonia, she whines quite often about how the Agency and her job are taking away from her personal life, specifically opportunities to visit her two friends in Bulgaria. Again, someone back at Langley must have misplaced the memo describing how the CIA was simply a front to bankroll Ms. Moran's Balkan vacation. How dare the Agency actually require her to work.

Finally, she is oft offended whenever the Agency wants to know about her personal life, specifically who she might be dating, especially if that person is a foreign national. These episodes are treated with great disdain and personal offense by Ms. Moran. Yet she never acknowledges the fact that she JOINED the CIA. The CIA did not draft her. Moreover, the Agency gave her more than enough prior warning regarding this condition of her employment. And yet she continued. Why? She says it outright early in the book, her ego. She wanted to prove she can make it in the CIA. So, she joined the CIA, disregarded its warnings about the conditions of employment, and then whined about those very conditions (conditions put in place to decrease the chance of a foreign intelligence service turning CIA agents).

These absolute absurdities are made worse when compounded by Ms. Moran's complete lack of understanding of geo-politics and counterterrorism. Early in the book she objects strongly to a briefer when he/she mentions that the new trainees represent the "best of the best." On this point I agree with Ms. Moran, there is no way the group could have been the "best of the best", as she was part of the group.

42 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst CIA Book I've Ever Read, May 1, 2005

By 

David Rosen "sway" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (Hardcover)

This book sucks. The auther left me with the feeling that the CIA will hire anybody. You don't have to believe in the mission or how it is achieved, you don't have to abide by CIA rules, and you don't have to accomplish anything once you're in the field (if she accomplished anything, she left it out of this book.)

This book hardly deals with experiences from the field - the majority of the book deals with her training class at The Farm. She whines about everything, admits that she didn't believe in what she was doing, and seems more concerned with having a boyfriend than spying.

For a better read, try Robert Baer's "See No Evil" and Melissa Boyle Mahle's "Denial And Deception."

And ignore the reviewers who can't resist refering to this author as a "liberal." Such readers miss the point and are simply too wrapped up in their own political idealogy to provide objective assesments on anything related to the CIA. Most good CIA officers offer criticism of liberal and conservative administrations.