Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-429) and index.

Prologue: The promise -- Part one: The assessment of men. -- Station W -- Get the food, Mary -- The clerk -- The diplomat's daughter -- Flaps and seals -- You had to wear a skirt -- Housewife cover -- The heist -- Incident management -- The vault women revolt -- Miss Marple of Russia house -- What are you going to do with the boat? -- Part two: Ladies doing analysis. -- The fiercely argued things -- Finding X -- You don't belong here -- A bright and attractive redhead -- Stress and a gray room -- The nicked earlobe -- I've got a target on my back" -- September 11, 2001 -- Part three: Getting their guys. -- The threat matrix -- The new girls -- Putting warheads on foreheads -- Espionage is espionage -- I made bad people have bad days -- Anything to fit in -- Laundry on the line -- Epilogue.

"The New York Times bestselling author of Code Girls reveals the untold story of how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, a sweeping story of a "sisterhood" of women spies spanning three generations who broke the glass ceiling, helped transform spycraft, and tracked down Osama Bin Laden. Upon its creation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency instantly became one of the most important spy services in the world. Like every male-dominated workplace in Eisenhower America, the growing intelligence agency needed women to type memos, send messages, manipulate expense accounts, and keep secrets. Despite discrimination--even because of it--these clerks and secretaries rose to become some of the shrewdest, toughest operatives the agency employed. Because women were seen as unimportant, they moved unnoticed on the streets of Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets under the noses of the KGB. Back at headquarters, they built the CIA's critical archives--first by hand, then by computer. These women also battled institutional stereotyping and beat it. Men argued they alone could run spy rings. But the women proved they could be spymasters, too. During the Cold War, women made critical contributions to U.S. intelligence, sometimes as officers, sometimes as unpaid spouses, working together as their numbers grew. The women also made unique sacrifices, giving up marriage, children, even their own lives. They noticed things that the men at the top didn't see. In the final years of the twentieth century, it was a close-knit network of female CIA analysts who warned about the rising threat of Al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, women rushed to join the fight as a new job, "targeter," came to prominence. They showed that painstaking data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape--an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA's successful efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden and, later, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With the same meticulous reporting and storytelling verve that she brought to her New York Times bestseller Code Girls, Liza Mundy has written an indispensable and sweeping history that reveals how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age"--