In 1999, Tracy Walder was a 20-year-old junior at the University of Southern California and a member of USC’s Delta Gamma sorority. She was also a history buff and an avowed news junkie who planned to be a teacher. Those plans were upended when she met a CIA recruiter at a job fair. After graduating from USC, she joined the CIA's global anti-terrorism operations.
The story of Walder’s five-year service at the CIA, her globe-spanning work in the agency's post-9/11 pursuit of Al-Qaeda operatives, and her subsequent stint as an FBI counterintelligence agent, is compellingly told in her new memoir, The Unexpected Spy: From CIA to The FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World’s Most Notorious Terrorists. Published by St. Martin's Press, it's co-written with best-selling novelist Jessica Anya Blau. Tracy Walder joins Tom in Studio A.
This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page. Watch the video here.
