Breaking Cover
I was always comfortable relying on Ms. Assad’s exceptional substantive expertise and commitment to her colleagues and our mission when we served together in an overseas war zone. Ms. Assad’s deeply introspective account of her CIA career, faith, and humanitarian work is an exciting read with firsthand insightful observations of the war-torn Middle East and valuable lessons learned, which readers will cherish.
DANIEL HOFFMAN
Retired senior CIA officer
Michele Rigby Assad’s Breaking Cover is an absolutely amazing read! It will grab your attention on every single page as you follow Michele’s remarkable journey working as a spy for the CIA. Even as someone who spent three years undercover for the FBI at a Fortune 500 company during the investigation of one of the largest white-collar crime cases in US history, I was amazed at Michele’s courage and perseverance as she fought terrorism in the most dangerous part of the world, the Middle East. I was especially touched at how she inspires us all. Michele Rigby Assad is a modern-day hero! Her book will inspire you to do more for your community, your country, and your society, and to live a life of significance.
MARK WHITACRE, PHD
Subject of the Warner Brothers movie The Informant!, starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre
The first time I met Michele, I was struck by her fashionista style, her quick wit, bright smile, and immense knowledge of the Middle East. She quickly proved herself to be a hard worker, a savvy ops officer, and an outside-of-the-box thinker. Her vivid descriptions of her life and travels with the CIA are very authentic, very personal, and a great read. The day Michele told me she was leaving the Agency, she explained that she felt a calling to do something impactful for women, and though she didn’t know what that was going to be, she knew it would be significant. Her story is a riveting one. Although I can neither confirm nor deny that I worked with Michele, I can tell you she is a great patriot with a great faith who will continue to blaze trails wherever she goes.
FORMER COWORKER
Breaking Cover is an authentic and honest look into a world that operates all around us, but to which most are oblivious. Michele Rigby Assad masterfully shares the soul-baring tale of her life, from small-town Southern girl to fierce intelligence operative challenging evil face-to-face. This story is not a simple autobiography, but a story of how one individual—walking in humility and faith, recognizing that life is not about her, and willing to risk it all to serve her fellow man—changed and saved an untold number of lives. One thing is certain: Breaking Cover is just the beginning of Assad’s story. The best is yet to come.
SUSAN RICHMOND JOHNSON
Managing principal, The Ashcroft Group LLC; former chief of staff for management, US Department of Homeland Security
Bold, beautiful, and brave, Michele Rigby Assad’s Breaking Cover is a must-read. She grants readers rare access into what it’s like to spend over a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA through riveting accounts of navigating life and work as a woman in war zones across the Middle East. Michele also lets us in on a bigger secret: She never felt like she was the secret agent type. Her courageous stories of resilience, faith, and grace will inspire millions of women (and men) to press on despite self-doubt, and to keep moving forward even in the face of fear.
JENNY BLAKE
Author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
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Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me about What’s Worth Fighting For
Copyright © 2018 by Michele Rigby Assad. All rights reserved.
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This does not constitute an official release of CIA information. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed solely for classification.
ISBN 978-1-4964-1959-0
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To my husband, Joseph: I wouldn’t have done any of this without you by my side. Thank you for being my biggest advocate and believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you for teaching me so much about the world and pushing me to write this book—I wish that every woman would have that kind of champion urging her onward and upward.
To my sister, Julie Clow, an amazingly gifted woman who is not only the coolest and most intelligent person I know, but my best friend from birth. I couldn’t have gotten through this life or written this book without your constant encouragement. You inspire me daily.
To my parents, Judy Morris and Art and Crystal Rigby, who taught me the power of positive thinking from a tender age, prayed for me through the darkest of hours, and rejoiced with me in the best of times. You never held me back from pursuing my dreams, even when they took me to places far from home.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Endorsements
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Spy Next Door
Chapter 2: The Right Stuff
Chapter 3: Don’t Judge a Spy by Her Cover
Chapter 4: A Model Spy
Chapter 5: Keep Calm—and Carry a Working Compass
Chapter 6: Into the Desert
Chapter 7: Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Chapter 8: Get Off the “X”
Chapter 9: Caught between Iraq and a Hard Place
Chapter 10: Welcome to Hell on Earth
Chapter 11: Face-to-Face with the Enemy
Chapter 12: Truth or Consequences—A Tale of Three Sources
Chapter 13: Never Say Never
Chapter 14: An Unexpected Mission
Chapter 15: Now What?
Chapter 16: You Can’t Go Home Again
Chapter 17: Back to Iraq
Chapter 18: Decision Time
Chapter 19: Escape
Chapter 20: The Final Push
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A number of names and biographical details in this book have been altered to protect the identities of CIA sources, agency officers, and others who could be adversely
affected by being associated with former CIA intelligence officers. Though the specifics of operations have been blurred, I have done my best to retain the details of my experiences, while changing enough information to protect sources, locations, and methods.
Thankfully, I documented many of my overseas adventures for personal as well as work purposes. During my first deployment in 2003, I started keeping a journal and shared many of those stories with a small group of family and friends. Regarding the evacuation, I kept notes on the interviews conducted at Mar Elia Church in Erbil, Iraq. Furthermore, I was able to refer back to a bevy of e-mails and cell phone texts to remember dates and specifics of that effort. The names and some identifying details of the potential evacuees we interviewed at Mar Elia have been changed to protect their privacy.
CIA operations included in the book were initially captured in agency cables in which I documented meeting dynamics, intelligence acquisition, and counterintelligence flags, as well as my findings and assessments. Since I am no longer employed by the CIA, I do not have access to those files and have had to recall those situations from memory. As a former employee, I obtained CIA clearance of the manuscript to ensure that no equities, such as sources or methods, would be harmed through the publication of this material.
PROLOGUE
ERBIL, IRAQ
SEPTEMBER 2015
“Why do you want to leave Iraq?”
The frightened family of six stared at us quizzically.
“Don’t you already know what happened to us?” asked Danial, the father. “We thought that was why you’re here.”
He was right. That was why we were there. Over the course of the past week, my husband, Joseph, and I had interviewed more than four hundred Christians who had been driven from their homes by Islamic extremists and were now anxiously seeking asylum outside Iraq.
While many Muslims were also suffering, Christians were far more vulnerable. When ISIS or other Islamic insurgents took over a city, the Christians were ordered to leave their homes or convert. Many fled—but then had nowhere to go. They knew that Christians who sought refuge at UN camps were often intimidated, attacked, or persecuted in other ways.
“We want to know what happened to your family specifically,” I told Danial. “If we are going to find a safe country willing to take you in, we must know the details of your stories so we can explain why these governments should help.”
What I didn’t tell him was that Joseph and I were also vetting those we interviewed. Our job was to ensure that there weren’t any elements of ISIS or other extremist groups in the mix—anyone who could pose a threat, now or in the future, to countries willing to provide them refuge. As former CIA counterterrorism and counterintelligence specialists, we had the perfect backgrounds for such an undertaking.
By this point in the week, after meeting with hundreds of people, Joseph and I were beyond exhausted. We had to turn off our feelings in order to get through the interviews, which were filled with one dramatic story after another. We didn’t have the physical or emotional bandwidth to process the depth of the tragedy these people, and hundreds of thousands like them, had endured. There was a job to do, and we had to get through it, tired or not.
That is what I told myself, anyway. At times, it was impossible not to respond to the utter desperation evident in so many faces. Not long before my interview with Danial, I’d sat across from a young husband and his wife. We had barely begun the interview process when their little boy began squirming on his mother’s lap. Soon he was not only struggling to get down, but he became quite vocal, breaking the conversation with the chatty disruptions of a bored toddler. Both parents snapped at him, desperately trying to rein him in.
As I read the panic in his mother’s eyes, I realized how terrified they were that their son might be jeopardizing the interview. I got out of my chair, knelt down in front of the mother, took the little boy’s hand in mine, and asked, “Kifak habibi? Ismak eh? Kam omrak?” (“How are you, my love? What’s your name? How old are you?”)
Both parents told me his name was George, and his mother helped hold up three of his fingers to indicate his age. While I focused on the boy, squeezing his adorably chubby cheeks, faint smiles appeared on the family’s anxious faces. I grabbed a plastic toy car from the table behind me and handed it to George.
As I noticed his parents visibly relax, I was struck again by the unfairness of the situation. This little boy was one of millions of Iraqis displaced by war. In a way, he was fortunate—he had lost only his home; his immediate family was still intact. Now his father and mother were desperately trying to get them out. They had no idea who we were or exactly what we were doing—only that we were working to find a safe haven in another country for one hundred or more Iraqis.
After concluding our interview with George’s parents, we’d conducted several others without incident. The interview with Danial and his family proceeded like those before it until the family’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Miriam, asked, “Can I please add my fiancé, Hamad, to the file? He is a convert from Islam to Christianity, and we are in danger if we stay here in Iraq.”
“Where is Hamad now?” Joseph asked.
“He lives with his family here in Erbil,” she explained.
That’s odd, I thought. Most Muslim families are not at all accepting when one of their members rejects Islam.
“They are not happy about his conversion,” she continued. “But he’s not in trouble with them so much as ISIS.”
“Why is that?” Joseph asked.
“Hamad’s mother used to be a Christian. She converted to Islam when she married a Muslim man many years ago. When ISIS took over Mosul where they resided, ISIS was looking for people to shake down for money. Even though she was a Muslim convert, ISIS heard that she was formerly a Christian who still had Christian family members, so they kidnapped her and demanded a ransom. Hamad was frantic to free his mother, so he sold one of his kidneys. He sent the money he received to the kidnappers, and they released her.”
What? I leaned forward in my chair. “Wait a minute. Your fiancé sold his kidney to pay a ransom for his mother?”
“Yes.”
Joseph and I exchanged furtive glances. There was something very fishy about this story, and the more questions we asked, the stranger it got.
I suddenly had a flashback to my CIA days, in which we’d heard some really tall tales in the debriefing room. Experience had shown that the more far-fetched the story, the more likely it was to be a fabrication. But every now and then, a source would tell us something outrageous that we didn’t initially believe but that would turn out to be shockingly true. Which one was this?
We needed to determine whether Hamad had really converted to Christianity. Was he a brave man willing to risk death for his newfound faith, was he just a liar seeking a way out of Iraq, or was he an Islamic extremist parading as a Christian convert to gain entry into another country?
What had begun like dozens of other interviews that week had taken an ominous turn. If we incorrectly sized up this man’s intentions, we might be sentencing him to death at the hands of ISIS—but if he were somehow allied with them, we might be jeopardizing the lives of countless innocent people.
My stomach tightened as I looked back at Miriam’s face, willing her to reveal something more about this man. She remained inscrutable, her eyes downcast, her hands folded demurely in her lap.
“Miriam,” Joseph said. She glanced at him shyly. “We will need to speak with Hamad. Please ask him to come by this evening.” She gave a quick nod.
Hours later, Joseph and I were back at the trailer that served as our office, waiting for the couple to arrive. My mind raced as I tried to put the pieces together.
The sound of heavy footsteps on the trailer steps, followed by the squeak of the door, made me look up. Miriam walked in first, trailed by a passive-faced young man.
On the surface, Hamad seemed just like any of the hundreds of other men we had interviewed—quiet,
and with a vacant expression that resulted from utter defeat, from not being able to provide for or protect their families.
But Hamad was single. He didn’t have a family to protect or provide for. The vacancy in his eyes was not one of embarrassment or failure; it was . . . something else.
Something was off about this guy and his story. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had every confidence that Joseph and I would get to the bottom of it. After all, this is why we had come to Iraq. This is what we had been trained for. We knew what converts looked and acted like, and we knew what terrorists looked and acted like. If this guy was bad news, we’d figure it out soon enough.
As Hamad sank down into the chair across from us, a rush of adrenaline coursed through my veins. This guy doesn’t know who he is up against. Joseph and I stole a quick glance at each other. Neither of us showed the slightest trace of emotion, but the feeling was palpable.
We’ve got this.
I never dreamed of becoming a spy. My dreams were for a much more pedestrian future: a comfortable home in the suburbs, a good, solid career, a couple of kids, and a white picket fence.
In fact, if you had told me twenty years ago that my calling would involve traveling to war zones or dealing with insurgents, I would have thought you were crazy. I wasn’t exposed to such things growing up.
My dad, a traveling life insurance salesman, was on the road a lot, and my mom stayed home with me and my little sister, Julie. When I was six, my family followed my maternal grandparents from rural Pennsylvania to Mount Plymouth, Florida, a little town in the center of the state. We lived in “the sticks,” which meant we were surrounded by cow pastures, orange groves, pine forests, and swampland. Sturdy oak trees dripping with Spanish moss and a tiny lake full of lily pads and reeds—not to mention herons, turtles, frogs, alligators, and water moccasins—added to the wild beauty of that rural setting.
Though I never strayed far from home as a child, I occasionally got glimpses of the wider world. Our neighbor Gladys paid Julie and me to water her plants each summer while she was on vacation. I would skip over to the house and water the dozens of houseplants. Before returning home, I’d sit on the floor in front of Gladys’s bookcase and spend hours pulling issues of National Geographic off the shelf and carefully paging through their colorful, glossy spreads. I was transfixed. The cultures were so intriguing to me, and their strangeness made me ache for the rest of the experience: the sights, sounds, and smells that would accompany such forays into the unknown.