Jonna Mendez makes no secret that In True Face started as her memoir of her life and career, twenty-five years in the CIA. It was a friend who asked, but what was it like being a woman and rising to a leadership position in the CIA in those years. She credits her co-author, Wyndham Wood, with helping to combine the two stories into one book, her career in espionage, and the world of women fighting for a place in a misogynistic workplace.

Mendez quotes journalist and CIA historian Tim Weiner. “Apart from the Marines, there is no branch of service in the United States government as hostile to women as the clandestine services of the CIA.” Mendez started her career with them as a “contract wife”, accompanying her husband, John Goeser, on his assignments. Although she supervised secretaries in her job before her marriage, she was hired as an entry level secretary with the CIA. Every time she and John moved for his job, she lost her seniority. Women were at the CIA to support the men, and lawsuits against the CIA didn’t do anything to improve women’s positions. Although the CIA lost lawsuits, they buried the results, even in 1980.

Jonna felt she had more to offer her country and the CIA. As Chief of the Clandestine Imaging Division, Tony Mendez offered hr training for a tech job with a camera. She worked hard at that, but, eventually there was a lack of overseas assignments in that speciality, and Mendez created a single-student training program for her in Disguise.

In the course of the book, Mendez discusses her overseas experiences, her assignments, and her slow rise at the CIA. There are personal stories, as she tells of having to lie and let go of old friends. After years of travel, she and her first husband grew apart. She eventually married her mentor, Tony Mendez, and stayed on at the CIA when he took early retirement. She discusses her own life after retirement. There’s so much she appreciates about her career, and she doesn’t dwell on the sexism.

But, it was there. As she said, this is a book about the CIA, sexism, and her own role in the CIA during the Cold War years. Whether you’re looking for the story of a remarkable woman, or the story of women fighting for a place in the workplace, In True Face is a remarkable memoir.

In True Face: A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Mendez with Wyndham Wood. Public Affairs, 2024. ISBN 9781541703124 (hardcover), 306p.

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