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Coming Out as an Intelligence Agent

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Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies

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Abstract

In this chapter, we return to the figure of the individual spy, specifically through analyzing memoirs written by intelligence operatives themselves. Here we consider the ways in which agents have both outed themselves and been outed, and the goals achieved through outing oneself as a member of the intelligence community. The chapter considers the writing of a memoir—by an operative or a family member—as an emancipatory act, aimed at making visible what has been invisible within the intelligence community.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Joanne M. Kaufman. Cathryn Johnson, “Stigmatized Individuals and the Process of identity.” The sociological quarterly 45, no. 4 (2005), 812.

  2. 2.

    Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 3.

  3. 3.

    T.J. Waters, Class 11: Inside the Cia’s first post-9/11 spy class (New York: Dutton, 2006).

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    J. Dovey, Freakshow: First person media and factual television. (Sterling: Pluto Press, 2000), 112.

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    Michel Foucault and Alan Sheridan. Discipline and punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Penguin, 1995), 53.

  7. 7.

    See Jonathan Freedland. “The Audacity of Hype? Could Obama’s Presidential Memoir be the Greatest Ever?” The Guardian. March 1, 2017. Available at http://www.ourdailyread.com/2017/03/the-audacity-of-hype-could-obamas-presidential-memoir-be-the-greatest-ever/. Accessed August 2, 2019.

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    Allen Barra. June 22, 2017. “The Best and Worst Presidential Memoirs.” The Daily Beast. Accessed August 3, 2019. Available at https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-best-and-worst-presidential-memoirs

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    Michiko Kakutani. “In Bush Memoir, Policy Intersects with Personality.” New York Times. November 3, 2010. Accessed May 10, 2019. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/books/04book.html

    See also Stanley A. Renshon, “President Clinton’s Memoirs: Caveat Emptor.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2005), 608–621.

  10. 10.

    Paulina Palmer. 2012. The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic. Aberysytwyth, Wales: University of Wales Press.

  11. 11.

    Daniel Ellsberg, “Secrecy and National Security Whistleblowing,” Social Research 77, no. 3 (2010): 773–766.

  12. 12.

    Kevin Casey. “Till Death Do US Part: Prepublication Review in the Intelligence Community.” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 417 (2015), 417–460.

  13. 13.

    Thomas Reed Willemain. “A personal tale of prepublication review.” Lawfare Blog. January 10, 2012, 2.

  14. 14.

    Casey, 419.

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    Central Intelligence Agency. “Keeping Secrets Safe: The Publications Review Board.” (February 2, 2017). Accessed September 12, 2019. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/aboutcia/publications-review-board

  16. 16.

    Casey, 423.

  17. 17.

    Willemain.

  18. 18.

    Edward Lee Howard. Safe House: The Compelling Memoirs of the Only CIA Spy to seek asylum in Russia (Bethesda, MD: National Press Books, 1995).

  19. 19.

    Shiva Balaghi, “Silenced Histories and Sanitized Autobiographies: The 1953 CIA coup in Iran.” Biography 36, no. 1 (2013), 72.

  20. 20.

    Sandra L. Faulkner and Michael Hecht. “The negotiation of closetable identities: A narrative analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered queer Jewish Identity.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 28, no. 6 (2011), 829–847.

  21. 21.

    Michele Rigby Assad, Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What it taught me about what’s worth fighting for (Springdale, IL: Tyndale, 2018), 32.

  22. 22.

    Waters, 26.

  23. 23.

    Takayuki Yokota-Murakami. “Espionage as a strategy of literary and cultural politics.” Neohelicon 37, no. 2 (2010), 449–455.

  24. 24.

    Yokota-Murakami, 452.

  25. 25.

    Jack Barsky, Joe Reilly, Cindy Coloma. Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America. (Springhill, IL: Tyndale, 2017).

  26. 26.

    Bridget Nolan. “From Petticoats to Trench Coats: The CIA as a Gendered Organization.” Unpublished paper given at International Studies Association Annual Conference April 7, 2017, San Francisco, CA, 5.

  27. 27.

    Waters.

  28. 28.

    Waters, 248.

  29. 29.

    Jack Devine. Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story (New York, Penguin, 2011), 50.

  30. 30.

    Carlston, Erin G. Double Agents: Espionage, Literature, and Liminal Citizens. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 4.

  31. 31.

    Carlston, 5.

  32. 32.

    Cynthia Weber, Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  33. 33.

    Reuel Gerecht, “Spooky Sex: Inside the Randy Culture of the CIA,” New Republic (February 21, 2013), 32–33. Available at https://newrepublic.com/article/112367/spy-sex-inside-randy-culture-cia. Accessed April 2, 2019.

  34. 34.

    Rich, C. O., Schutten, J. K., & Rogers, R. ‘Don’t drop the soap’: Organizing sexualities in the repeal of the US Military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. Communication Monographs, 79 (2012), 272.

  35. 35.

    Yokota-Murakami.

  36. 36.

    Matthew Beard, “The human costs of torture,” in Jai Galliot, Warren Reed, eds., Ethics and the Future of Spying (New York: Routledge, 2016), 59.

  37. 37.

    James Hohmann. “The Daily 202: Why John McCain Opposes Gina Haspel leading the CIA – and why it matters.” Washington Post. May 10, 2018. Accessed July 15, 2018. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/05/10/daily-202-why-john-mccain-is-voting-against-gina-haspel-to-lead-the-cia-and-why-it-matters/5af36bb030fb04258879942c/

  38. 38.

    Michael McGough. “Like Obama, CIA nominee Haspel wants to ‘look forward’ on torture questions.” Los Angeles Times. May 9, 2018. Accessed June 10, 2018. Available at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ed-haspel-cia-20180509-story.html

  39. 39.

    Amber Phillips. “Four takeaways from Gina Haspel’s confrontational CIA confirmation.” Washington Post Blog. May 9, 2018. Accessed June 2, 2018. Available at http://r.com.pk/four-takeaways-from-gina-haspels-confrontational-cia-confirmation-hearing/

  40. 40.

    Jose A. Rodriguez, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives (New York, NY: Threshold Editions, 2012).

  41. 41.

    Jack Devine, 224.

  42. 42.

    James M. Olson. Fair Play: The Moral Dilemma of Spying. (Washington, DC. Potomac Books, 2006).

  43. 43.

    Olson.

  44. 44.

    See, for example, Eva Dillon, Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, his Russian crown jewel and the Friendship that Helped End the Cold War. (New York: Harper Collins, DATE).

  45. 45.

    Ian Shapira, “CIA Divorces: The Secrecy when Spies Split,” Washington Post. March 13, 2012. Accessed August 1, 2019. Available at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cia-divorces-the-secrecy_n_1345108

  46. 46.

    Sarah Barnett. “With her husband jailed for betraying the CIA, a spy’s wife fights to come in from the cold.” People. May 18, 1981. Accessed August 3, 2019. Available at https://people.com/archive/with-her-husband-jailed-for-betraying-the-c-i-a-a-spys-wife-fights-to-come-in-from-the-cold-vol-15-no-19/

  47. 47.

    Barsky, 269.

  48. 48.

    Valerie Plame. Fair Game (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008).

  49. 49.

    See Victoria Gotti’s memoir This family of mine: Growing up Gotti (New York: Gallery Books, 2014).

  50. 50.

    Sue Klebold and Andrew Solomon. A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (New York: Broadway Books, 2017).

  51. 51.

    Dana L. Cloud, “Private Manning and the Chamber of Secrets,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1, no. 1 (2014): 89, Accessed April 12, 2019, https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.1.1.0080

  52. 52.

    Barsky et al.

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  1. Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

    Mary Manjikian

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  1. Mary Manjikian
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Correspondence to Mary Manjikian .

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Manjikian, M. (2020). Coming Out as an Intelligence Agent. In: Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39894-1_6

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