Tracy Walder was werkzaam als operationeel medewerker bij het Centrum voor Terrorismebestrijding van de CIA en als speciaal agent bij het FBI-kantoor in Los Angeles, waar ze gespecialiseerd was in Chinese contra-inlichtingenoperaties. Momenteel zit ze in het bestuur van Girl Security, een organisatie die zich inzet om meisjes op Amerikaanse voorbereidende scholen kennis te laten maken met concepten van nationale veiligheid, met als doel hen te empoweren als transformerende krachten in een traditioneel door mannen gedomineerd veld.
"Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones and the Six in this funny, wise and tender novel about a fourteen-year-old girl's coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive family she nannies for - who happen to be secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer"--
A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists-men who swore they'd never speak to a woman-until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn't a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate-and thus change the world