Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me about What's Worth Fighting For

A real-life, can’t-put-down spy memoir.

The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek out potential agents who can keep a secret yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country but are willing to leave it behind for dangerous places; who live double lives but can be trusted with some of the nation’s most highly sensitive tasks.

Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people.

As a CIA agent and a counterterrorism expert, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real; the assignments perilous. Michele spent over a decade in the agency―a woman leading some of the most highly skilled intelligence operatives on the planet, secretly serving in some of the most treacherous areas of the Middle East, and at risk as a target for ISIS. But deep inside, Michele wondered: Could she really do this job? Had she misunderstood what she thought was God’s calling on her life? Did she have what it would take to survive?

The answer came when Michele faced her ultimate mission, one with others’ lives on the line―and it turned out to have been the plan for her all along.

This powerful, true story of grit and courage covers:

• The CIA recruitment process
• How Michele was trained for espionage
• How her Christian beliefs influenced her time undercover

In Breaking Cover, Michele has at last been cleared to drop cover and tell her story: one of life-or-death stakes; of defeating incredible odds; and most of all, of discovering a faith greater than all her fears.

When debriefing any jihadist, most agents have three handicaps:
We are Americans (strike one), ‘nonbelievers’ (strike two), and CIA officers (strike three). As I prepared myself to walk in and meet Abu Muhammad for the first time, I knew I had a fourth handicap: I was a woman.

Breaking Cover is the explosive tell-all memoir of Michele Rigby Assad, an ex-counterterrorism expert for the CIA. From leading secret undercover missions in some of the world’s most dangerous places to winning success in a male-dominated industry, Michele shows how ordinary people can do extraordinary things―even in the unlikeliest of circumstances.