Review
Joseph Weisberg, a former CIA
officer, has said that he wanted to write
"the most realistic spy novel that had ever
been written," and so
An Ordinary Spy
portrays not the glamour and suspense of
working for the CIA but the everyday tedium
of slowly cultivating informants for tiny
scraps of intelligence. The protagonist,
Mark Ruttenberg, is also a former CIA
officer, writing a memoir about when he was
a new agent on his first overseas
assignment, desperate to advance his career
by recruiting his first informants. In
Ruttenberg's world, the real gains for
national security are minimal, the risks are
enormous, and the opportunities for heroism
practically nonexistent, as his actions are
muffled by...
Beyond the Book
Redactions in Modern
Literature
Though the memo at the
end of the novel from
the CIA Publications
Review Board is
addressed to the novel's
protagonist, Mark
Ruttenberg, thus
revealing the redactions
(blanked out text) as a
fictional device to
create an aura of
authenticity, the novel
did actually pass
by the PRB—six times.
Weisberg preemptively
redacted his own work
for security reasons as
well as literary ones,
but was obligated to...
