美国国家公共电台 NPR The War On Terrorism, Through The Eyes Of 3 Women At The CIA

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the CIA started scrambling¹ to ramp² up its counterterrorism operations. That included an infusion³ of young recruits, many of them women, into an agency long dominated by older men. Three women in the thick of this battle have now each written books about their secretive work, laying out the successes and the shortcomings of the war on terror. NPR's Greg Myre has their stories.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE⁴: When the September 11 attacks hit, Amaryllis Fox was about to start her senior year in college. The next day, she drove to New York to see the smoldering⁵ rubble⁶ and asked herself, what can I do? Just a few years later, she was an undercover CIA officer tracking extremists.

AMARYLLIS FOX: One of the things that I think we all forget is how incredibly young so many of the intelligence officers really are.

MYRE: Tracy Walder was a sorority sister at the University of Southern California and a news junkie who joined the CIA just weeks after graduation in 2000. The terror attacks the following year accelerated her training.

TRACY WALDER: To be completely honest with you, I had been placed in the Counterterrorism Center not because I was spectacular but because I was young. And so a lot of us sort of newbies were placed in the Counterterrorism Center.

MYRE: These two women, along with a third, Nada Bakos, all have new books that present in detail how they went about this work - like how to create an undercover identity as an art dealer⁷ or how to trade coded messages on a Starbucks gift card. And as Tracey Walder explains, it's not easy blending in as a young, blonde American in the Middle East.

WALDER: Sometimes I would have to travel in the trunks of cars just because that was the way that it was. And I was going to stick out no matter what.

MYRE: They all had distinct roles. Nada Bakos entitled her recently released book "The Targeter," which was also her job description. Her mission was to learn everything possible about extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a key leader in the Iraq insurgency⁸.

NADA BAKOS: You're looking for information that you can act on. So you give it to whatever action arm that we have at the time, and in my case, quite often it was Special Forces.

MYRE: Zarqawi was ultimately killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2006. Amaryllis Fox writes in her book "Life Undercover" about making her way through the congested streets of Karachi, Pakistan, for a clandestine⁹ meeting with extremists. She's trying to learn about a possible attack; they want to discuss U.S. drone strikes that are killing¹⁰ civilians¹¹.

FOX: There are electric moments walking into meetings. There are moments of the intense drama that we associate with the war on terror, with the spy world.

MYRE: This war also marked a major shift for a spy agency run by older white men who had specialized¹² in Russia. After September 11, the focus turned to radical¹³ Islam. Women were part of this rising generation. Last year, Gina Haspel became the CIA's first woman director. Here she is speaking this past April.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GINA HASPEL: It is a great time to be a woman at the agency. The head of operations is a woman. The head of analysis is a woman. The head of science and technology is a woman. You might sense a conspiracy¹⁴ here, but...

(LAUGHTER)

MYRE: The three women authors don't see a conspiracy; they see a skill set that many women bring. Again, Amaryllis Fox.

FOX: Some of the traits that we tend to associate with feminine characteristics - you know, intuition, emotional intelligence and to multitask - these are things that make really excellent operations officers.

MYRE: These books are also filled with frustrations¹⁵. Nada Bakos was on a team looking into possible links between al-Qaida and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

BAKOS: We really didn't find a connection between Iraq and any, you know, larger international terrorist organization that would have really been a - posed a threat to the United States.

MYRE: Which was not what President George W. Bush's administration said when it launched the war against Iraq.

BAKOS: There were moments in my career when I just wanted to go out onto the street and yell exactly everything that I've told the policymaker that they aren't telling the public. I mean, it's incredibly frustrating¹⁶.

MYRE: Around the same time, Tracy Walder's team made poster-sized graphics¹⁷ showing that Saddam likely did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet that work was sent to the White House and later morphed into the poster that Secretary of State Colin Powell famously used at the United Nations to argue that Saddam did have such weapons.

WALDER: Obviously, we were horrified¹⁸. What could we do about it, right? Wasn't much. But I do think that part of that chart, along with the whole WMD case, was used sort of incorrectly as the impetus¹⁹ for the Iraq War.

MYRE: Like all books by former CIA employees, the manuscripts had to be reviewed by the agency. The one by Amaryllis Fox recently caused a stir amid reports that it had not been cleared for publication, yet it was published as planned on Tuesday. All three women left the CIA by 2010 and have moved on with their lives. Amaryllis Fox sometimes travels to Iraq to work with those scarred by violence. Nada Bakos is at a social media company in Seattle. Tracy Walder, whose upcoming book is called "The Unexpected Spy," teaches a course called spycraft at an all-girl school in Dallas. Some students have followed in her footsteps.

WALDER: I've had girls now who work at State Department, CIA, FBI.

MYRE: In the compartmentalized world of the CIA, these three women say they've never met. If they ever do, they'll have a lot to talk about.

Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.

1 scrambling   

v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Scrambling up her hair, she darted out of the house. 她匆忙扎起头发，冲出房去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She is scrambling eggs. 她正在炒蛋。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 ramp   

n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速

参考例句：

• That driver drove the car up the ramp.那司机将车开上了斜坡。
• The factory don't have that capacity to ramp up.这家工厂没有能力加速生产。

3 infusion   

n.灌输

参考例句：

• Old families need an infusion of new blood from time to time.古老的家族需要不时地注入新鲜血液。
• Careful observation of the infusion site is necessary.必须仔细观察输液部位。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 smoldering   

v.用文火焖烧，熏烧，慢燃( smolder的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The mat was smoldering where the burning log had fallen. 燃烧的木棒落下的地方垫子慢慢燃烧起来。 来自辞典例句
• The wood was smoldering in the fireplace. 木柴在壁炉中闷烧。 来自辞典例句

6 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

7 dealer   

n.商人，贩子

参考例句：

• The dealer spent hours bargaining for the painting.那个商人为购买那幅画花了几个小时讨价还价。
• The dealer reduced the price for cash down.这家商店对付现金的人减价优惠。

8 insurgency   

n.起义；暴动；叛变

参考例句：

• And as in China, unrest and even insurgency are widespread. 而在中国，动乱甚至暴乱都普遍存在。 来自互联网
• Dr Zyphur is part an insurgency against this idea. 塞弗博士是这一观点逆流的一部分。 来自互联网

9 clandestine   

adj.秘密的，暗中从事的

参考例句：

• She is the director of clandestine operations of the CIA.她是中央情报局秘密行动的负责人。
• The early Christians held clandestine meetings in caves.早期的基督徒在洞穴中秘密聚会。

10 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

11 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

12 specialized   

adj.专门的，专业化的

参考例句：

• There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
• These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。

13 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

14 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

15 frustrations   

挫折( frustration的名词复数 )； 失败； 挫败； 失意

参考例句：

• The temptation would grow to take out our frustrations on Saigon. 由于我们遭到挫折而要同西贡算帐的引诱力会增加。
• Aspirations will be raised, but so will frustrations. 人们会产生种种憧憬，但是种种挫折也会随之而来。

16 frustrating   

adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's frustrating to have to wait so long. 要等这么长时间，真令人懊恼。
• It was a demeaning and ultimately frustrating experience. 那是一次有失颜面并且令人沮丧至极的经历。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 graphics   

n.制图法，制图学；图形显示

参考例句：

• You've leveraged your graphics experience into the video area.你们把图形设计业务的经验运用到录像业务中去。
• Improved graphics took computer games into a new era.经改进的制图技术将电脑游戏带进了一个新时代。

18 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

19 impetus   

n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力

参考例句：

• This is the primary impetus behind the economic recovery.这是促使经济复苏的主要动力。
• Her speech gave an impetus to my ideas.她的讲话激发了我的思绪。