62 AMERICAN SPY
James Bond and Forrest Gump,” a ridiculous assertion since I look nothing
like either of them.)
I wasn’t born with a burning desire to cross enemy lines and enter war-
ravaged Sarajevo in the dead of night. I didn’t grow up longing to traverse
the Iraqi desert enveloped in an epic sandstorm to help rebuild modern-
day Mesopotamia. I really, truly did not want to set foot in Los Angeles.
Ever. And yet somehow, I spent most of my adult life in war zones and
other challenging environments.
For whatever reason—probably a combination of internal “wiring,”
training, and experience—I’ve always been pretty good at assessing and
minimizing risk. When I travel to Middle East conflict zones, for example,
I am not putting myself into as much danger as it appears to my friends
and family, because of how I go about it. I’m also genetically blessed with
unusually low blood pressure, which apparently helps a person to remain
calm in almost any situation.
In case you have preconceived notions about the kind of person who
joins the CIA and ends up in foreign hot spots, you should know that I’ve
never been the macho, aggressive type who seeks out conflict. On the con-
trary, I prefer to avoid it. Give me too much to drink in a crowded, noisy
bar and I don’t want to start a fight. I want to start a family.
Growing up middle class in the idyllic 1960s and 1970s American South-
west, I assumed that after high school I’d go to US Army basic training
and then ship off to the war in Vietnam, like all the older neighborhood
kids did. I knew from the nightly news reports that our young soldiers
had to tread silently through the steamy, verdant jungles in order to avoid
detection by the wily Vietcong. As a sufferer of seasonal allergies, I envi-
sioned my future eighteen-year-old self on patrol in the sweltering tropical
bush, forced to blow my nose on a banana leaf. The incessant honking and
sneezing would of course betray my squad’s position to the Vietcong, who
would then kill us all.
This is the kind of thing that kept me up at night. So, when I learned
over the radio in 1973 that the Vietnam draft had ended, I was surprised
and relieved. It had never occurred to me that the wicked war would ever