Share

Like most CIA officers, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen was content to spend a career in the shadows. Unlike so many of his neighbors in Washington’s power circles, he was happy to stay out of the limelight, away from the cable TV talking-heads circuit, pleased to live the private life of a spy agency operative and bureaucrat. 

Now, however, he’s emerged with a fascinating memoir that is a spy’s story in two dimensions. What makes it unique is his fascinating career as a seeker of secrets both professional and spiritual. And quite a career it was: Over 23 years, Mowatt-Larssen was a station chief or deputy in several foreign capitals, including Moscow. Back at headquarters, he was entrusted with running in succession the Europe division in the directorate of operations; the department tracking weapons of mass destruction; the counterterrorist center; and the CIA’s military support outfit.

His career spanned the CIA’s uneasy decades from the end of the Cold War through the so-called Global War on Te…