If you are looking for a true spy story, this book is not for you.
Thanks to the very heavy handed redacting by CIA censors, also a subject of the book, many interesting stories are maybe told, but you will not be able to read them. The complete picture of the years Mrs. Wilson spent at the CIA are finally put together in a very concise well written afterword by Laura Rozen with a lot of help, quotes if you will, from James Risen’s book, “State of War.” An excellent book by the way, and an excellent resource for the real inside dope that was going on in our intelligence community as we geared up to the Iraq War.
This book is more a personal story about one person and then one family. It is about growth, sacrifice, hope, love, patriotism and betrayal. Oh, and Post Partum Depression, (PPD), yes that too. It is about the olio that is most people’s lives with one enormous exception, most of us have never had the most powerful government on the planet deliberately targeting to destroy us. The Wilsons did.
To give a complete picture of Mrs. Wilson, she is no shrinking violet, and no crazy liberal. She actually refuses to bad mouth William Casey and actually says he was the best CIA director of the past 50 years. Most liberals remember William Casey as the mastermind of the Iran-Contra operation and was then opportune enough to get Alzheimer’s just as the scandal came to light, and very conveniently died soon after. She also underwent paramilitary training, and held many secret and dangerous positions within the agency. The picture that emerges is of a very patriotic American, who became disillusioned with GWB and his administration, but not her country or form of government.
This book is almost a biography to date. Mrs. Wilson takes us through her childhood, upbringing and education. She then tries to tell us how and when she joined the CIA, and that is where the redacting starts. The story is later told by her mother in the afterword. The redacting gets so nick picking at points that she cannot even tell us how she met Joe Wilson. After you read it in the afterword you can see that the CIA really did not want this book out and did their best to kill it before it was published.
She goes through her life at the CIA with many censor inflicted omissions. And talks about the birth of her twins and how she dealt with PPD. See a real person. Ultimately the gist of the book is a story most of us already know, and wondered how they dealt with it and what went through the Wilson’s mind. In the process she also manages to shed some light on some of the developments of her Husband’s trip to Niger and her outing that are not commonly known.
This is an excellent account of the entire episode and what it means for our intelligence community and our national security. If you are not familiar with the story, this is an excellent inside perspective. If you are familiar with it you may be surprised at what you missed.
If you can pick up a copy of James Risen’s, ”State of War,” I highly recommend that you do.