On July 24, 2018, LIFE Today will feature Michele Rigby Assad, a former CIA intelligence officer, to discuss her new book Breaking Cover. Assad recently sat down with Nancy Flory of The Stream to talk about life in the CIA, how she got through the difficulties of living in a war zone, and what she discovered that was worth fighting for. 

Michele Rigby Assad didn’t know she wanted to work for the CIA until they hired her. Even through the year-long training she had her doubts. She dealt with “imposter syndrome.” “How in the world did they think I was CIA material?” she asked herself. Even after the training, she wasn’t sure she was up to the task. 

Her ‘Aha’ Moment

As a woman, Assad wasn’t always taken seriously. She was told that her strengths — empathy, intuition, getting along well with people different from her and the ability to read people — were “soft” skills. But one moment proved otherwise.

Assad was debriefing a source. “And that was my ‘aha’ moment in the CIA where suddenly I realized that everyone had been wrong. I was not only good enough, I was an incredibly skilled intelligence officer. … All of those things that I had been told were soft skills … were actually critical to that success. Those things weren’t soft skills. They were actually what enabled me to be an intelligence officer that was really on the mark.”

The CIA had also hired Assad’s husband as an intelligence officer. That they could be assigned to the same operation meant that the CIA was getting a two-for-one deal. It also meant that they could bounce ideas off of one another ahead of a meeting with a source.

“I couldn’t have done any of it without Joseph right next to me,” said Assad. “Who better than your spouse to prepare you to go out and meet your source, because they know you and they know what you’re thinking about and they know what you’re forgetting.” The couple was assigned to the Middle East. 

Living Undercover

It was hard living undercover. “You’re essentially living a lie every day,” she said. “You’re saying you’re one thing and you’re really another. You’re running clandestine operations at night under the watchful noses of the foreign government that would very much like to capture you in the middle of an operation.”

Assad and her husband moved wherever the CIA sent them. At one point, they lived in a war zone. “You’re constantly looking for hostile surveillance to be sure that you were not being targeted,” she explained.

“Every time you get in the car, every time you go somewhere, you’re looking out because being a CIA intelligence officer you knew al Qaida was on the streets, you knew they were milling around near where you lived and worked and went to the grocery store. So, the stress of that was constant.” Every day Assad and her husband had to run into bunkers as shells were exploding all around them. 

“I literally had nothing but my faith in those moments.” Assad would cry out to God and ask why her career had to be so difficult. “What’s the purpose in this?” she asked. Assad said it took ten years to get an answer from God.

Finally, she received a calling to write her new book, Breaking Cover. She knew she would be able to share her story and inspire others. “And it was then I could look back on all those years of uncertainty and realize that God’s plan was in it all along, but I had to wait a very long time to see that and appreciate it.”

Uncomfortable Spaces

Assad never entered a situation feeling prepared or ready. She walked through the fear. “I think a lot of people say ‘I’ll wait until I feel like I’m prepared’ or ‘I’ll wait until I feel certain I can do X, Y and Z.’ That’s simply not how it works. If you’re going to live a life of great impact for the Kingdom, you’ve got to get used to pushing yourself into the most uncomfortable spaces. … courage is a muscle and the more you push yourself out of the comfort zone, the easier it is to do that time and time again.”

“I have just constantly done the things that scare me and I think that’s why God led me in such interesting directions because I simply was open to His leading, wherever that was, and I never put conditions on my commitment to Him. Therefore, he took me to some crazy places.”

Worth Fighting For

Assad discovered two things worth fighting for: faith and authenticity. It’s holding onto faith when there’s no clear reason for doing so. Assad calls it dumb faith. “I’m just going to believe this because I’m supposed to trust in God, even if everything around me [says] ‘Why are you doing this?’ You’ve got to hold on to your faith in God, regardless of circumstances.”

As for authenticity, Assad said God made each of us with a unique skill set and strengths and He wants to use them in interesting ways. Assad used to walk through the halls at the CIA and say “good morning” each day, but was greeted with stares. “But I had to be me. And I was told I couldn’t carry out operations because I was me, when in fact, what made me different was what made me able to shine in operations.”

The Next Operation

After their 10-year stint at the CIA was over, Assad and her husband began another operation in the Middle East: rescuing persecuted Christians. Hollywood producer Mark Burnett and his wife actress Roma Downey were helping the Church in the Middle East. Now they wanted Assad and her husband to help Christians leave areas where they were persecuted for their faith.

“Our particular skills were very operational in nature,” Assad explained. “And so we were brought in to basically find a group to work with, find the needy people, vet them, and then we were all trying to find countries willing to take them.” The Assads were able to successfully evacuate 149 Iraqi Christians who had been displaced by ISIS in northern Iraq.

Assad wants everyone to know that she’s a normal, ordinary person living an extraordinary life. “God was able to use me to do extraordinary things because my faith was greater than my fear. Not because I was better than anyone else, but because I trusted Him so much with my life.”