VOLUSIA

Former CIA spy's new book details her experience in Iraq

Suzanne Hirt
suzanne.hirt@news-jrnl.com
For a decade after 9/11, Michele Assad served as a CIA counterterrorism officer in cities around the Middle East. In her memoir "Breaking Cover," out Tuesday, Assad reflects on her life as a spy and how it prepared her to help evacuate 149 Iraqi Christian refugees from ISIS and relocate them to a safe home in Slovakia. [Courtesy of Diana Lewkowicz Photography]

She had an advanced degree in Arab studies, spoke Arabic and had traveled extensively in the Middle East. Still, Michele Assad’s supervisors at the CIA underestimated her ability as a counterterrorism officer at every turn.

Assad’s memoir “Breaking Cover,” out Tuesday, details her life as a spy in the world’s most dangerous war zones, the gender discrimination she encountered daily and how that adversity cultivated in her the skills necessary to complete the mission she and her husband, Joseph, had been preparing for their whole lives.

The Assads, who still live in Florida but have moved from their previous residence in New Smyrna Beach, recounted that mission — the vetting and evacuation to Slovakia of 149 Iraqi Christian refugees under threat from Islamic State forces — to The News-Journal in early 2016.

Michele Assad, 44, delves further into that harrowing tale in her book and urges readers "to not be scared to take the hard road," she said in an interview last week. “I think it’s really important in the age of Instagram to realize that success or impact doesn’t come quickly or easily. It requires dedication and doing hard things.”

Tyndale Momentum associate publisher Sarah Atkinson said she was attracted to Assad's behind-the-scenes glimpse into spy life as well as the "very relevant" message in Assad's story.

"Michele was working in a male-dominated industry and consistently had to fight to overcome perceptions that she might not be up to the job," Atkinson wrote in an email. "Yet what she found was that, as a woman, she was equipped with specific gifts and strengths that actually turned out to be a tremendous asset to her work, sometimes in surprising ways."

Though Assad's Christian faith plays an important role in her life, the book's themes of "authenticity and confidence and courage will resonate with anyone regardless of their faith background,” Assad said.

She met her husband — Egyptian by heritage and Lebanese by birth — as a teenager at a Mount Dora church. After college they married and moved to Washington, D.C. Both joined the CIA’s Directorate of Operations after Michele Assad completed her master's degree at Georgetown University.

Their “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”-style life as spies in war-torn nations held all of the danger but none of the glamour depicted by that flashy film couple.

As a white Western woman, Assad found it especially difficult to maneuver in the rigid cultures of the Middle East, where women were covered from head to toe and rarely allowed to leave home.

During a tour in Baghdad, she had more imminent concerns. “We were handling intelligence about the location of an IED (improvised explosive device) or a car bomb or a group of terrorists. It was perishable intelligence that had to be acted on immediately,” Assad said. “The stress involved in collecting that information, handling terrorist sources and the risk involved — and making sure to get it right — was overwhelming.”

Those life-or-death scenarios played out inside the green zone where CIA officers lived as well. They were subjected to steady shelling and were constantly diving into bunkers. The nonstop adrenaline rush of literally running for their lives took a tremendous toll.

For years afterward, loud noises elicited an extreme response. “A car backfires, we’re on the pavement. Your heart is jumping out of your chest when the sonic boom goes off because to you it sounds like a car bomb,” Assad said.

Her job involved not only preventing attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces but also investigating those that were carried out successfully. The gruesome scenes stuck in her mind. “You look at everybody going about their daily business and everything’s fine and normal, and you still have pictures of dead bodies in your head. It’s kind of hard to process these very different worlds.”

Assad’s colleagues were shipped off to the world’s most beautiful cities, but she and her husband were deployed repeatedly to hotbeds of extremist activity where nobody wanted to serve. She slogged through paperwork and wrote endless reports after each operation while also pushing back against CIA restrictions.

“I found it shocking to be told as a female in the agency that I would be less effective because of my gender, because I was dealing with people from a culture that doesn’t respect women in such positions,” she said. “Somehow my male colleague who has never been to the Middle East and knows nothing about Islam could do this job better than me.”

So Assad let her work illustrate her worth as an agent, turning perceived weaknesses into advantages. When she engaged insurgency leaders to assess their value as sources, she addressed them in Arabic and demonstrated her understanding of their objectives.

“I had to come from a place of empathy so I could see that terrorist as a human being, but whose ideology and behavior appalls me," she said. "If I’m going to connect with him on a level that rates trust so I can get him to give me sensitive intelligence, I have to figure out how to interact with him as a living, breathing human and the killer I know he is.”

Her expertise in reading people proved invaluable when she found herself back in a war zone years after her 2012 exit from the CIA. As ISIS gained ground in northern Iraq, tens of thousands fled their homes to escape the radical brand of Islam the terrorist group enforced in conquered cities.

MGM Television and Digital Group president Mark Burnett got word of an endangered encampment of Christian refugees and contacted the Assads for help moving some of them to safety.

The husband-and-wife team met with hundreds of hopeful Iraqis. They interviewed each one extensively, verified multiple official documents for every person and weeded out a few whose stories were fabricated. The Assads petitioned the Slovakian government for asylum, and in December 2015 flew 149 refugees to freedom.

But assimilation was grueling. Many returned to their homeland once their villages were liberated, not realizing ISIS had obliterated the infrastructure, Assad said.

“They went home to nothing. It was completely unlivable,” she said. Rebuilding will take years if not decades, so those families are refugees once more.

Others, however, have flourished in Slovakia. One family with whom the Assads still communicate is celebrating their daughter’s college admission. Another has found employment and integrated successfully into society.

Slovakia is not ready to take on more refugees, but Assad continues to utilize her CIA experience in other ways. Her personal focus has shifted to public speaking and training Americans how to deal with active shooters and workplace violence. Her message is one of hope and perseverance.

“I tell people don’t be scared to do the hard things because that’s usually where you find out what your strengths are," she said. "It’s really on the edge of life, on the extreme edge of things that you really can discover the fullness of who you are and what you have to give the world.”

'Breaking Cover' launch events

10 a.m. Wednesday: Megyn Kelly Show on NBC

6 a.m. Thursday: Fox and Friends on Fox News

6:30 p.m. Feb. 28: Flagler Tavern, 414 Flagler Ave., New Smyrna Beach