In True Face: A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked

Mendez’s engaging memoir of her life in the CIA, in which she served from 1966 to 1993, has two main themes. One is familiar: the challenges talented women of her generation faced as they tried to make careers in areas that had traditionally been reserved for men. She joined the CIA as a “contract wife,” given a job so she could travel with her first husband, John, who was already in the agency. In this supporting role, she was given gainful but undemanding work. But Mendez was both ambitious and clever, and she sought out and eventually got more interesting assignments, but only after confronting continual, and in some instances extreme, misogyny. Her career provides the second theme: the importance of the technical services that support the agency’s clandestine work. This emerges as she progresses from working with film to developing disguises for agents in the field, which on occasion required her to go into the field herself. These sections are full of fascinating details about the techniques agents use, from the highly sophisticated to the hastily improvised. She is particularly proud of a mask that she pulled off her own face in front of President George H. W. Bush to reveal her true identity.