Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me About What's Worth Fighting for by Michele Rigby Assad
Michele Rigby Assad . Unknown Year . English
A real-life, cant-put-down spy memoir. The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek out potential agents who can keep a secret yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country but are willing to leave it behind for dangerous places; who live double lives, but can be trusted with some of the nations most highly sensitive tasks. Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people. As a CIA agent and a counterterrorism expert, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real; the assignments perilous. Michele spent over a decade in the agencya woman leading some of the most highly skilled operatives on the planet, secretly serving in some of the most treacherous areas of the Middle East, and at risk as a target for ISIS. But deep inside, Michele wondered: Could she really do this job? Had she misunderstood what she thought was Gods calling on her life? Did she have what it would take to survive? The answer came when Michele faced her ultimate mission, one with others lives on the lineand it turned out to have been the plan for her all along. In Breaking Cover, Michele has at last been cleared to drop cover and tell her story: one of life-or-death stakes; of defeating incredible odds; and most of all, of discovering a faith greater than all her fears.
Categories: Biography
About the Author
Michele Rigby Assad is an international corporate advisor and keynote speaker. She parlayed a ten-year career as a CIA operative in the Middle East to consulting for multinational companies facing complex geopolitical challenges. Her extensive experience in the Arab World drives her ability to interpret and navigate risk to design safe and effective operations. Michele has played a pivotal role in high-stakes missions both as a counterterrorism official in the government and as a human rights defender in the civilian world, culminating in the 2015 airlift operation and relocation of 149 persecuted Iraqi Christians from Northern Iraq to Slovakia. Michele also provides security advice to nonprofit organizations working against human trafficking and in support of women rebuilding their lives. Hailing from a small town in Central Florida, Michele determined that her simple beginnings would not define her future. She quickly learned how to push through fear and other obstacles to defy her own expectations and live a life of meaning and purpose. Her early pushes "off the X" to serve on college mission teams and study abroad in Egypt, Israel, Russia and Ukraine, resulted in a lifetime of travel to over 52 countries. Michele holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a political science degree from Palm Beach Atlantic University. Michele and her husband Joseph live in Florida.
