"Sarah" could have been the perfect spy. She speaks five languages, is an excellent marksman and did well in her counterterrorism course in high-speed evasive driving. She is an expert in international weapons proliferation and economics. She can pass for Mexican, Egyptian, Italian, Indian, Spanish, even Thai. On assignment for the CIA in the Third World, Sarah, decked out in dangling earrings and tight-fitting pencil jeans, foiled surveillance by fading into hooker-infested back alleys. She has sat primly in "love hotels" taking notes as informants rattled on about the doings of a terrorist cell. Sarah should have been the perfect spy. But her boss had other ideas. He assigned her to a desk job and escort duty for junketeering congressional wives. "I've dealt with some real lowlifes," she says. "But my supervisor was more of a sleazebag than any of the men I met. They treated me with respect; he stared at my legs and gave me bad assignments."
Now Sarah is striking back. She and eight other women -- all clandestine intelligence officers -- have filed a sexual-discrimination class action against the Central Intelligence Agency's alite Directorate of Operations -- the service that gathers intelligence overseas. The CIA has answered the charges with an offer of a collective settlement that includes $940,000 in back pay plus promotions and "career enhancing" assignments. The plaintiffs say that is insufficient.
The lawyers who first negotiated the settlement for the women contend that more than 100 female case officers, now overseas and undercover, have telephoned in their support for the agreement. "This agreement is not a panacea," says Joseph M. Sellers of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "It will not change overnight what has been decades of entrenched nepotism and connections developed through an old-boy network. But I think it is a very good first step, and it holds real promise to bring that insidious process to an end over time." Unconvinced, the plaintiffs have engaged a new lawyer -- former CIA analyst Michael P. Kelley -- and hope to persuade U.S. District Judge Albert Bryan this Friday to spike the agreement and send the agency back to the bargaining table.
Sarah, "Diane" and the other Directorate operatives who organized the lawsuit spoke with TIME, using aliases unknown to the agency for fear of retaliation. They say neither money nor the remedial promotions will fix the more profound problems within the DO. The CIA also insists on retaining the right to deny women certain overseas assignments when Western notions of gender equality collide with what the agency believes to be the practical considerations of running spies in male-dominated societies. Says a male former DO official: "Female case officers can't drive cars in Saudi Arabia. In Latin America, if a female officer serenades a Don Corleone, the first thing he tries to do is get her in the sack."