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A Fictitious, or Confessionally-Criminal Account of CIA’s Spy-Hunting
Andrew Bustamante, Shadow Cell: An Insider Account of America’s New Spy War (New York: Little, Brown and Company, September 1, 2025). Softcover: $15.99. ISBN: 978-0-316572-14-9.
**
“A thrilling firsthand account by husband-and-wife CIA operatives who, against all odds, triumphed in a deadly cat-and-mouse game against a mole within the agency—an unprecedented insider account of 21st-century spycraft in the tradition of Argo and Black Ops.” Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (2013): describes how a CIA agent faked being a producer of a fake “science fiction film called Argo” to contact “escapees” and smuggle them out or Iran. The American diplomats just hid in locations such as European embassies, and then gathered in the home of Canadian diplomat John Sheardown. They could have just been given fake papers or the like to get out of the country, but instead the CIA spent enormous resources on this fake “film” project: probably to profit those involved rather than to logically help those in-hiding. Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior (2022) is about the “shadow wars” during “the Vietnam Era”; between 1998-2000, the narrator sets out to “re-establish a once-abandoned CIA station” in (not Korea, or the Middle East) but apparently in an African city… he refers to as “Shangri La”, instead of specifying just where this terrorism hotbed is supposed to have been. Who was this Cuban-immigrant warring with in Africa…? If this book follows in the footsteps of these earlier CIA-confessions…
“Andrew and Jihi Bustamante were a ‘tandem couple’: married spies who’d dedicated their lives to the CIA. They met as trainees at Langley, and got married while hunting terrorists across the globe. Then, suddenly, they were assigned to a mission so sensitive and explosive that the CIA still has never acknowledged it.” This means that this narrative can be a fiction that the CIA directly denied, or insisted is a fiction, and yet these guys are selling their fiction as fact. Alternatively, it might be a true story that the CIA wants to deny because it speaks about their misdeeds. “The CIA’s source network in a country code-named ‘Falcon’—one of America’s most formidable rivals—had been compromised by a mole, and the agency needed a new way to collect intelligence there.” This use of a fictional country-name “Falcon” echoes the lack of a country-name in Africa where Black Ops took place. Using fictional names and denying such stories allows the CIA to spread propaganda about their heroic deeds, without needing to provide any documentary proof to substantiate such claims. And without even a concrete country-name critics cannot disprove such CIA-puffing propaganda either. The “Author’s Note” elaborates it is “a government implacably opposed to the United States and its allies.” Opposed to what part of the US government? With actors like Trump acting on behalf of the US there are certainly many rational reasons for all non-totalitarian governments to oppose something the US government is doing…
“Young newlyweds, the Bustamantes were considered safe choices for this daunting task precisely because they had no experience in Falcon. They were also loyal, forgettable, and completely disposable—operatives who could help to strengthen the CIA’s position in Falcon while simultaneously serving as bait for the mole. But although their superiors at the CIA didn’t realize it, the Bustamantes also brought another advantage to the table: a granular understanding of how terrorist cells operate, and how the agency could exploit those same tactics to keep America safe.” What? The CIA did not know this couple had any knowledge about terrorism? This either means that this couple was previously embedded or acted in concert with terrorists without letting superiors at the CIA know about these affiliations, or… I cannot imagine an opposing possibility, as this seems to be what is being suggested. “Assembling a rag-tag team of fellow operatives and recruiting new sources from Falcon, the Bustamantes pioneered a new way of spying by building a cell of their own—right at the heart of the CIA.” What? These guys built a new terrorist cell? Why fight the enemy when you can become an enemy? I can see why the CIA would not want to acknowledge whatever nonsense this is suggesting. “The propulsive, untold tale of one of history’s greatest intelligence crises…” What, again? Something cannot be historic, if it is “untold”. Either this narrative has escaped historic notice, or it is historic and thus cannot be secret and untold. There must be a lie in this claim, either way. “…And the unlikely band of agents who were sent in to clean up the mess”. It “allows us to peer behind the curtain to see how today’s spy wars are being fought—and won.”
To figure out a bit more, I searched inside: no mentions of “rag-tag”. “Operatives” are mentioned in an explanation about how Andy created a false-identity by being assigned an “overseas posting as a mid-level employee of a US federal agency”. If he had been given an official job; he surely would have been sent abroad under his own name… So this explanation is irrational, and again must be false. Then, there’s a description of “training” with “Langley” where Andy is put in nightmare scenarios such as being swatted, seeing his friends fake having been shot, and the like.
There are several references to a “mole” throughout. The fictional country of Falcon is accused of penetrating “American media, industry” and “intel services”, including his “mole” who “had penetrated of Langley’s most elite and sensitive divisions…” associated with the country the mole was claimed to be spying for: in other words they found that an ambassador of country X had been researching America on behalf of the country they were hired to represent in an ambassadorial role. This is not espionage: this is legal diplomacy that is being investigated as if it is criminal by the US.
I cannot keep reading this book-of-nonsense. It might be confessing some kind of extreme wrongdoing by the CIA, but it is doing so in such cartoonish, and poorly-researched terms that it is unreadable. I do not recommend for anybody to attempt reading it.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-summer-2025/

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Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Quite simply this book was a little like Mr. & Mrs Smith for the espionage set. A very quick read that had some interesting anecdotes, and I found it to be an interesting read. I am not quite sure who the target audience is for this book, but as something to add to one's knowledge base I thought it was a good read. I rated this 3.5 stars

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