Breaking Cover Read online

  Only the most clever, courageous, and fortunate agents stayed alive and remained effective in spite of the Germans’ penetration of the Resistance. Only a few agents escaped the clutches of the Nazis once their cells were compromised and their identities, locations, and activities were discovered. It was so dangerous to operate behind enemy lines that the life expectancy of an Allied radio operator (one of Virginia’s many roles) in 1943 was just six weeks.[4]

  In late 1942, with the Gestapo hot on her heels, Virginia slipped away from the ever-tightening dragnet by using one of the most risky avenues of escape—she hiked across the snow-covered Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, in the middle of winter (despite being labeled unfit for service because she wasn’t “able-bodied”—take that, State Department!). Throughout the war, Virginia remained one of the Nazis’ most elusive targets, frustrating any and all attempts to find and finish her.

  Following her Houdini-like escape from the claws of her adversaries in France, Virginia was recruited by the OSS, and in 1944, she reportedly parachuted back into France with her prosthesis in her knapsack. Disguised as an old farmhand, she trained Resistance battalions, organized sabotage operations, supplied intelligence on the German army, performed the critical duties of a radio operator, worked as a courier, located drop zones for Resistance forces, and helped prepare the ground for D-day.

  After the war, Virginia transitioned from the OSS to the newly created CIA and remained there until her mandatory retirement in 1966.

  Virginia embodied everything I wanted to be. She was adventurous, gutsy, courageous, headstrong, and incredibly intelligent. She wasn’t easily dissuaded from accomplishing her tasks, and she used everything at her disposal to engineer success. She pushed every boundary presented to her, willing and able to drive right to the edge without letting fear get the best of her. She instinctively knew how to transform her disadvantages into advantages; her obvious limp, for example, became an opportunity to disguise herself as an old woman or a beggar. Incorrect assumptions about her physical limitations allowed her to skirt surveillance by employing methodologies her enemies did not expect. In this way, Virginia never drew their attention and instead used her disability to blend right into the landscape.

  Virginia wasn’t good enough for the State Department, but she was good enough to take on the Gestapo. She wasn’t good enough to sit behind a desk reading and writing cables, but she was good enough to execute hundreds of military and intelligence operations against the Nazis.

  The training exercise with Jim and Malek was designed to expose my weakness as a woman operating in the high-stakes field of international espionage. But what they hadn’t counted on was the experience I had gleaned studying and working abroad in the Middle East. When they looked at me, they no doubt saw a petite, timid little girl who would crumble under the pressure.

  Of course, plenty of men had underestimated Virginia Hall, too.

  [2] “Not Bad for a Girl from Baltimore: The Story of Virginia Hall,” State Department library, http://photos.state.gov/libraries/estonia/99874/History%20stories/Not-Bad-for-a-Girl-from-Baltimore.pdf.

  [3] Cate Lineberry, “Wanted: The Limping Lady,” Smithsonian, February 1, 2007, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/wanted-the-limping-lady-146541513/.

  [4] Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 15.

  During that year of training, we learned all aspects of HUMINT (Human Intelligence) operations, including how to spot, assess, develop, and recruit an agent; debrief an agent; vet information; identify counterintelligence threats; spot surveillance; carry out covert communications; execute high-threat meetings; protect sources; conduct dead drops; and write intelligence reports.

  There were so many aspects of training that I often referred to it as “boot camp for intelligence officers.” Students were constantly observed and their performances rated by instructors. And the instruction didn’t end once we began working in the field. Before deployment to dangerous postings, CIA officers had to be recertified, not only on the Glock and M4, but in the Overseas Personal Security Course. Since our work was a matter of life and death, the staff had to be certain that we had the ability to clandestinely run an operation and keep ourselves, as well as our assets and information, safe. I did great at the psychological stuff. And I turned out to be quite astute at the shooting and high-performance driving segments. However, my performances in two of the other paramilitary exercises were not my finest moments—especially the ambush and land navigation.

  Even though the ambush exercise only mimicked an attack, I hated the idea of being in such a vulnerable position. Along with the other students, on the day of this exercise I slid the protective face mask over my eyes, pulled the protective vest over my long-sleeved shirt, tucked my pants into my combat boots, pushed the gun into the holster on my hip, grabbed the semiautomatic weapon loaded with paint-filled Simunition cartridges, and climbed into a station wagon with other trainees. We watched as another car full of trainees pulled out and headed into the forest. For some reason, my pulse started racing. I tried to calm myself down. After all, this wasn’t real: fake terrorists, fake ammunition, fake ambush . . . no worries, right?

  Knowing that I would have to scramble out of the car, I wanted to test my door to make sure it opened easily. The lock released, but when I tried to press down on the handle, it wouldn’t budge. The door was jammed shut. Thank goodness I had the foresight to try the door. My eyes scanned the vehicle, frantically searching for the next best exit.

  The other trainee in the backseat was a gentleman who was significantly overweight (we’ll call him Larry). I felt bad for Larry. He probably hated this part of the training too. But my sympathy quickly dissolved into a selfish concern that he probably wouldn’t be able to move very quickly once the terrorist attack unfolded. If I was to avoid getting shot, exiting his side of the vehicle was probably not my best bet. I’d be better off scrambling over the seats to escape through one of the front doors.

  Our instructors stood outside the vehicle. Once they confirmed that we had our seat belts on and were sufficiently geared up, they told the student in the driver’s seat to follow the little dirt road into the woods. The only other instructions he was given were to drive about twenty-five miles per hour and to just “keep going.” They didn’t say how far to drive, but I guess that was the point. We weren’t supposed to know where the ambush would occur (hence the term ambush).

  The driver put the car into gear, and we slowly rolled into the eerie calm of the thick forest. As the station wagon rumbled down the dirt path, we eagerly scanned the horizon, searching for the attackers. A couple of students cracked jokes to break the tension, but I could not relax. I was breathing hard into my face mask, causing a cloud of warm breath to accumulate on the plastic screen. Yes, I’ll admit it: I was terrified. This training exercise was the antithesis of fun for me. But as much as I despised it, I knew I desperately needed it. After all, I would be deploying to locations where the possibility of an ambush was not out of the question.

  Without warning, a loud explosion pierced the silence, followed by a quick succession of deep thuds as the car was pelted with rounds. The driver yelled, “Contact left!” signifying the direction from which the attack had been initiated. Suddenly the car’s engine died. We were unable to get off the “X” in the relative safety of the vehicle—the preferred course of action if you were to experience this in real life. Then four masked men emerged from the woods, aiming their AK-47s and firing at my side of the car. Someone yelled, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” and the trainees started scrambling out of the right side of the vehicle.

  As I suspected, Larry was having a difficult time responding to the stress. He was fumbling with his door and couldn’t seem to get it open. I had a feeling this would happen! As expected, I would need to climb into the front seats in order to get out of the vehicle. Because I was saddled with so much gear, scrambling over the center console was
as tricky as I thought it would be. I was not exactly agile, but this option was still quicker than waiting for Larry to move. As I scaled the seats and fell into the front, he was still trying to get his door open.

  I didn’t know where the attackers were at that moment, but I desperately hoped they hadn’t made their way to the right side of the vehicle and weren’t lying in wait for me to exit. Unfortunately, I couldn’t waste a moment to look. I had one focus—get out of the car. When I finally crawled out of the front passenger seat, Larry fell sideways out of the vehicle and into the mud. In his panic, he had forgotten to unbuckle his seat belt and was still very much attached to the car. Worse yet, he couldn’t figure out how to extract himself from the awkward mess. As he tried to get up, he let out a yelp. I wonder if he hurt himself.

  At this point, the attackers were crossing in front of the vehicle, so I decided it was time to get out of Dodge. I took off running and headed for the tree line just yards away. Meanwhile, Larry lay wounded in the mud (he had twisted his ankle) and was soon getting “shot up” before the instructors realized that he was, indeed, injured. Meanwhile, I followed the rest of the students into the woods, running like hunted prey.

  I crashed through the undergrowth, quickly catching up to the others. We were desperate to get out of range of the attackers. Even though they could not see us anymore, they were still able to shoot. The exploding rounds kept whizzing by and striking us on the backs of our legs, rear ends, thighs, shoulders, and arms. As a round hit the back of my leg, I gasped at the stabbing pain and ran even faster. The volley of paint-filled bullets continued, following our group deeper into the forest.

  Without warning, the officer in front of me tripped on a tree root and fell hard into the mucky swamp. It was too late for me to change direction, so I tripped over his feet and slammed down on top of him, hitting my head hard. Then the guy behind me, who had been right on my heels, came crashing down on top of us, splaying arms and legs all over. There we were, a writhing pile of America’s best and brightest, covered in paint splatter, mud, sweat, and dirt. Navy SEALs had nothing on us.

  We left training that day battered and bruised. But as painful as the simulation was (to both my body and my ego), it taught me the importance of pushing past fear and discomfort. That’s what the instructors were trying to condition us to do—to conquer our tendency to freeze during critical moments. They wanted to be sure we had the capacity to act when action was most needed.

  According to behavioral scientists, the human tendency to freeze in the context of a threat may be a native biological response to extreme stress. Though it is quite typical to freeze when you are being attacked, paralysis is your enemy. However, if you think through and even practice your options ahead of time, you are less likely to freeze. That’s why it’s important for soldiers, police, firefighters, and anyone else who must operate within the context of rapid responses and life-or-death situations to be trained with drills that are as realistic as possible. The idea is to develop muscle memory for things like aiming and pulling a trigger while under extreme stress or using one’s vehicle to get off the “X” and away from danger, if necessary.

  Given enough training, certain skills and behaviors become so automatic, they become almost impossible to turn off.

  Case in point: Several weeks into my training, I had driven from my townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to Washington, DC, during a rare break to join some friends for Sunday brunch. As I came around a bend in the road, a car about fifty yards in front of me (going the opposite direction) slowed down to about ten miles per hour as it passed a water treatment facility. As it did, I saw a dark-haired male in the passenger seat surreptitiously lift a camera and snap a few pictures. The car then sped away as the camera disappeared from view. The way the man lifted the camera and took pictures without looking into the viewfinder or focusing the lens seemed terribly sneaky. Since water treatment facilities aren’t normal tourist destinations or typical subject matter for photographers, I immediately became concerned.

  Terrorists case potential targets in order to identify vulnerabilities, and they design attack plans using photographs, videos, and sketches. They have to obtain these materials without anyone knowing what they’re doing, so they try to look inconspicuous and fly under the radar of the casual observer. It’s the same strategy robbers use to case a bank or convenience store prior to hitting it.

  This was a particularly sensitive period in our nation’s history, just six months after 9/11. We were fully engaged in the Third World War (i.e., the war against terror) and painfully aware that al-Qa’ida was preparing for additional attacks against the homeland as well as US interests abroad. There had been a spike in surveillance activities against US infrastructure, including bridges, fuel depots, oil refineries, military facilities, national landmarks, financial institutions, and government buildings.

  That was it for me. I flew like a race car driver to the next light so I could do a U-turn and pursue the suspicious vehicle. There was no question: I had to get his license plate number, vehicle description, and as many details as I could about the driver and his passenger. I swerved in and out of traffic for several miles before I was close enough to obtain the identifying information.

  Luckily, I had a notepad and pen in my purse, which I had been using in my own surveillance runs. I captured the data and submitted it to the FBI’s tip line as a suspicious activity report. I never heard back. To this day, I have no idea who the two dark-haired men were or what they were doing in the blue rental car, but their behavior didn’t seem normal or natural to me.

  Likewise, a few weeks later I was at a toy store in the mall, shopping with my six-year-old niece, when I noticed a male, who looked about forty, crouched down by the Barbie dolls. His hair was greasy and unkempt, his shirt half tucked in, his appearance disheveled. Something about this guy made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He wasn’t the kind of person who normally perused the doll section. From the moment I had turned into that aisle and laid eyes on him, I couldn’t help but focus on the strange man. Is he shopping alone? I wondered. If not, where is his daughter or the small child he is with?

  Each time shoppers walked by, the man furtively glanced their way. His placement (in the toy store by himself) and behavior (the furtive glances at other shoppers) had clued me in to the possibility that something was amiss. Having just finished surveillance training, my senses were primed to notice anything unusual and to identify anything out of place, so I focused on his demeanor as my family and I shuffled by.

  As I keyed in on his face, I saw his expression completely change and his eyes bug out of his head when my niece walked by. The look on his face was evil and wildly inappropriate in ways that I won’t even try to articulate. It sent chills down my spine. I wanted to effect a citizen’s arrest in the toy store immediately. But since I couldn’t prove the guy was the monster that every cell in my body sensed, I simply ushered my niece—and the rest of the family—out of that aisle and exited the store. Looking back, I wish I had alerted store management to the potential problem, but I did not yet have confidence in my intuition and assessments.

  The point is, my training was changing my perception of the world. I was picking up on details I might have normally missed. By honoring my God-given intuition instead of questioning it, demeaning it, or squashing those flashes of insight, I was seeing a different dimension altogether. The more training I received and the more frequently I applied the concepts I’d learned, the more sensitive I became. I was becoming more attuned to my environment—I was becoming a spy.

  One of the last paramilitary training exercises we did tested our land-based navigational skills. Naturally, on the day we were to be tested, a freak snowstorm dumped two feet of snow in the region. Being a Florida native, I had seen this much snow only twice in my life, so I was completely out of my element. While I would have preferred to retreat inside and sit by a cozy fire sipping a hot cup of coffee, I was going to have to spend all day outs
ide in the frigid cold, navigating a large forest and zigzagging my way from waypoint to waypoint.

  There were already plenty of existing challenges in the terrain without the snow, but Mother Nature had found a way to make the task even harder. I figured the course would take about twice as long to complete because we’d have to trudge through a mixture of snow and piles of decaying leaves shed from the thousands of deciduous trees that fall.

  Dressed in multiple layers that included cold-weather fatigues and combat boots, each student set out on a unique course. Initial waypoints had been issued that morning as we stood at the starting line surveying the picture-perfect snowdrifts. We were given a full day to finish the exercise, which required us to navigate in and around dense forests, rambling streams, large hills, dense thickets, and nasty thornbushes (my absolute favorite). The area was chock full of lakes and swampland that needed to be avoided, although the snow made these hazards harder to identify before we stepped into them.

  After a week’s worth of navigation training, I was still nervous, but I also realized how far I had come. I felt confident I could complete the course even though I was cold and uncomfortable in the snow. With a backpack containing a map stuffed into a waterproof pouch, coordinates for each waypoint, a compass, a pencil, a whistle, an MRE (meal ready to eat), and water, I set out from the starting line. I kept sinking in snow that went past my knees and, in some areas, up to my thighs. A mere forty-five minutes later I reached my first waypoint. I was feeling really good about myself, thinking, Yay! I can do this! After pausing for a moment, I took a drink of water and read the second set of coordinates that had been placed on top of the red barrel marking the first waypoint. After checking my compass, I got my bearings and set out for the second waypoint.