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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Mitch Fadem’s The Unassuming Spy: The Inside Story of a CIA Asset follows a toxicologist whose professional career leads to twenty years of covert work for the CIA. Recruited because his background gives him access to researchers, Fadem travels abroad under his own identity while gathering intelligence. His ability to speak various languages helps him build relationships with scientists whose research may have military value. Over time, his academic career becomes inseparable from intelligence service, giving the CIA influence over his movements. Fadem learns that refusing assignments can put his patriotism into question, even after missions place him at risk. By 2006, he decides that military deployment to Afghanistan offers the only route out, because combat duty requires the CIA to end its relationship with him, returning control of his future to him.
Mitch Fadem’s The Unassuming Spy is a fascinating memoir, with Fadem bringing candor to a life spent moving between science and covert service. Fadem writes in a conversational tone that makes CIA tradecraft accessible through his observations and matter-of-fact recollections. At his strongest, he shows what his expertise made possible as years of assignments alter his relationship with service. In 1999, after a handler questions whether refusing an assignment means choosing when to be patriotic, Fadem realizes that the CIA “owned” him, marking a shift in how he sees his role. Years later, his toxicology expertise becomes lifesaving when he identifies a Philippine Conotoxin from a poisoning victim’s symptoms, giving investigators the information needed to save the person. Through these moments, Fadem makes the memoir worthwhile for readers interested in intelligence told through lived experience. I highly recommend it to readers fascinated by the hidden uses of science.
