Insider's Novel Skewers CIA

A novelist with a real CIA past has written about the agency's most secretive spies. The Pickle Factory, a satirical novel by a still-undercover ex-nonofficial cover officer writing as Sam R. Oyken, portrays the CIA's deep-cover program as bloated, mismanaged, and obsessed with money over results—drawing on barely disguised episodes that former officials say echo actual operations, the Washington Post reports. The book only surfaced in late July after a decade-long clash with CIA censors, who initially barred Oyken from publishing "a single word," he said, before trying to black out more than half the manuscript.

Oyken, a Harvard-trained lawyer who joined the CIA in 1996 and later led an NOC unit—whose members lack overt government ties—was fired in 2010 after being accused of financial and workplace misconduct, allegations he calls retaliatory. His 2015 lawsuit over his dismissal and the book's suppression was tossed on procedural grounds. The Pickle Factory revisits the agency's post-9/11 push to rapidly expand its deep-cover ranks—an effort that former colleagues describe as a costly failure—and skewers senior officials as fixated on spending while field officers floundered. The CIA has kept its opinions on the book to itself.