Rosemary Dew, who earned the title of Special Agent of the FBI, was recipient of eight commendations from FBI directors, and was the seventh woman to be named supervisor at FBI headquarters, has opened up the files on the agency and reveals a broken organization rife with discriminatory practices. Dew worked undercover against criminals, spies, and terrorists. She supervised the bureau's international response to the Achille Lauro hijacking and signed the arrest warrant for Abu Abbas. Yet for all her accomplishments, Rosemary Dew remained a "female" agent first and "special" agent second, treated with disdain, sexually harassed, and denied the opportunities and privileges of male agents. In her memoir, Dew relives her FBI life from the training academy to the most sensitive missions of national security. As her tale unfolds, so do the FBI's many problems, one of them being the bureau's persistent lack of cooperation with other investigative agencies — an attitude instilled from its inception by J. Edgar Hoover. Special Agent Dew views the FBI as a dysfunctional family where those who don't fit the Hoover mold are not welcome. In No Backup, Dew makes a powerful call for change and lays out a blueprint for FBI reform.
Dew, who worked for the FBI from 1977 to 1990 in positions of increasing responsibility, delivers, with the assistance of writer and reporter Pape, a gripping expos‚ of the entrenched discrimination against women agents that is rampant throughout the bureau. During her initial training at the FBI Academy in Virginia, she and other women trainees were berated by instructors and subjected to inappropriate sexual overtures from some male classmates. Early in her career she was advised to avoid the company of other female agents and to work only with all-male squads. Deprived of each other's company and support, women agents were routinely faced severe harassment that went unpunished. In 1987, Dew was appointed to the position of squad supervisor of the Denver field division counterterrorism squad, where, despite her reputation for excellent job performance, a case supervisor consistently undermined her authority. She further charges that the FBI has poor internal communication and cooperation with other agencies, which may have contributed to its lack of prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks and also to the mishandling of other cases. Although Dew's story is engaging, the insertion of the details of her personal life (she had two abusive marriages before a satisfactory third) feels forced and unnecessary.
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Dew served for almost 13 years as a special agent in the FBI, 3 of them as a field supervisor. She describes how she was treated with disdain because she is a woman and how in her first mission--a case of extortion--she was not provided with backup. She writes that J. Edgar Hoover's compulsive need to appear perfect in the eyes of the public led to the edict that making a mistake was not an option and that there is an unwritten code of conduct that the bureau will make a whistle-blower's career "a living hell." Dew alleges that the FBI has had internal communication failures, cover-ups, and botched cases, pointing to Robert Hanssen, the spy who operated undetected for 20 years. She suffered sexual harassment and was denied privileges given to male agents. Dew believes that the FBI should concentrate less on the bureau family euphemism and more on building and sustaining a professional work environment. This is an important book. The FBI should pay attention to what she's trying to tell it. George Cohen
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