Hello and welcome to the second installment of A Likely Story, a newsletter about writing—and expanding our notions of—history. Thank you for subscribing and I look forward to the conversations. In the weeks since my new book, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA, was published, I’ve been musing about topics, but today’s is one that I had not foreseen.
The topic that’s been occupying my mind is a kind of deja vu: that is, what it feels like when history, or what seemed like history, re-emerges in the present day; when problems we might have thought were comfortably in the past turn out to be very much still with us. One of the threads that I think runs through The Sisterhood is the question of what happens when women’s voices and expertise are silenced—or those of any group that is marginalized or not part of the mainstream—and how this silencing can make the world more dangerous, in a way that affects us all. We are seeing that play out now, in the Middle East.
When I embarked on research for a book about women in American intelligence, part of the motivation was hearing from numerous sources how a group of female CIA analysts predicted the threat of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda for many years before 9-11, sounding warning after warning only to have their insights minimized and dismissed by top officials at the agency and in the White House. During interviews, it became clear that to understand how and why this happened, the book would need to embrace prior decades and show how women at the CIA—one of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies—had been sidelined even as their presence was necessary, in a workplace that happened to be competitive, elitist, and often ruthless. So I talked to many female officers who served during the Cold War, interviews that were infuriating—listening to the discrimination and plain meanness with which they contended—but also fun, full of dash and bravado and turning of tables. But as we got closer to the events of 9-11, the conversations became much more sober. When the book was published, I was grateful when the Atlantic editors offered to distill that central theme—the silencing of women and its role in 9-11--as a stand-alone essay.
Little did any of us suspect that history was, at that very moment, repeating itself. In the wake of the horrific Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, and the ensuing war that has cost so many innocent lives, a startling number of accounts have shown with agonizing clarity the ways in which conscientious female members of Israel’s military and intelligence service tried repeatedly to warn of a pending attack by Hamas, only to be dismissed by overconfident male colleagues and commanders.
For example: Earlier this week, The Daily podcast featured a gripping interview with New York Times reporter Ronen Bergman, building on his explosive NYT article detailing how, a full year before the October 7 attack, Israeli intelligence obtained the Hamas attack plan but decided it was “aspirational” and that Hamas was not capable of pulling it off. A senior analyst, a woman, disagreed. She was a veteran intelligence officer assigned to a base where her job was to study Hamas’ battle tactics. When she became aware of a field exercise, a military simulation in which Hamas practiced taking down a helicopter, crossing the border into Israel, raiding a kibbutz and military academy, and killing the cadets, she wrote a five-alarm email. “I never saw anything like this,” she said, describing the drill as “madness” and pointing out another critical detail: language in Hamas communications echoed the attack plan that had been obtained.
Her insights were rebuffed; according to Bergman’s excellent reporting, the chief of intelligence for the Gaza division commended her on her detailed memo but pronounced the exercise to be “imaginative.” Undeterred, she defended her analysis, taking on the groupthink of officials who, like the builders of the Titanic, were smugly certain their mighty defenses—a border wall and other technologies—remained impregnable. In the parlance of today, she leaned in. “This is a plan for invasion,” she argued. “Not a plan for a raid. This is a preparation for war, and it can happen.” Hamas, she said, had not only the intent, but also the capability. Again, she was rebuffed—patronizingly complimented and basically told not to worry her pretty little head.
Well-reported articles in Politico Europe and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (paywalled but available in other formats) illustrate the same dynamic. Haaretz published harrowing accounts of warnings by an all-female team of “spotters,” young women soldiers assigned to sit at computer monitors day in day out, studying the Gaza border, who also observed, and flagged, unmistakable assault preparations by Hamas. These young women, too, were ignored. Many were killed in the attack. It is unbearable to read.
An article in The Financial Times elaborates, showing how the female border spotters sent a “detailed report” predicting that “Hamas was training to blow up border posts” and enter Israeli territory. A high-ranking officer dismissed their spot-on predictions as an “imaginary scenario.”
Was sexism a factor in this massive intelligence failure? Clearly. To be sure, it’s true that in any hierarchical military environment, lower-level male soldiers are often instructed to just do their job and leave the thinking to the leaders. But consider yet another piece, this one in Air Mail, detailing how one female spotter was told to pipe down with her doomsaying. “Your role is to use your eyes, not your brains,” she was told by a commander, who added. “Women are not good at analyzing.”
A surviving spotter told Haaaretz, “There’s no doubt that if men had been sitting at those screens, things would look different.”
I have to confess, I thought this mindset had passed. But no. These modern accounts eerily echo what happened a quarter century ago, to those female CIA analysts who tried to warn about bin Laden, his intents and capabilities. The parallels are striking: a male-dominated intelligence establishment pigeonholes women—often stereotyping them as “diligent” and “painstaking”--and assigns them to grindingly detailed, non-sexy jobs such as analysis and spotting. When the teams do their job well, patiently studying the data and reaching conclusions, they face glib disbelief from the swaggering folks who put them in these roles.
The same under-estimation hampered the female CIA analysts who unmasked the traitor Aldrich Ames in the 1990s; and a predecessor who predicted the Sputnik launch back in the 1950s. After so many cautionary examples, it is unutterably tragic to see it happen again.
I’ve spoken with a number of the CIA analysts, who are in agony reading about the efforts of their counterparts in Israel; the fate many suffered, and the carnage that has followed. “Israel has a lot to account for,” said one. Nations who silence or ignore half their population do so at their peril. It is not “identity politics” to say so. It’s just fact. When will this lesson get permanently learned? Ever? The CIA itself seems to get the message; it’s widely acknowledged that female targeters were key to the hunt for bin Laden, which would not have succeeded without their presence at the table.
The only heartening thing, I suppose, is that reporters and readers are newly attuned to this dynamic—willing to believe it occurs and that it matters. The superiors might have marginalized the women, but the public discussion has not. To the contrary; the news accounts about Isaeli women’s warnings have gained traction. Often, the modern discussion about equity and inclusion confines itself to corporate America, but this one entails national security; war; and human lives. The message: All voices matter and acknowledging this matters to us all.
(Photo Credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)